https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e20020136
Electronic structure and anomalous physical properties of metastable Al-Si solid solutions
1
Department of Theoretical Physics, Moscow State Institute of Steel and Alloys -
Technological University, Leninsky pr. 4, 119991 Moscow, Russia
2
Department of Applied Physics,
Chalmers University of Technology and Göteborg University, SE-412 96 Gothenburg,
Sweden
Corresponding author: a d.livanov@misis.ru
Received:
31
January
2002
Published online: 15 May 2002
Al-Si solid solutions synthesized under high pressure demonstrate striking physical properties, such as enhanced superconductivity and peculiarities of low-temperature transport coefficients. In order to understand the connection of these effects to the electronic structure changes we have performed a first-principles study of the electronic spectra and Fermi surfaces of Al-Si solid solutions. We show that two electronic topological transitions (ETT's) lead to unusual concentration dependencies of the resistivity, thermoelectric power and Hall constant of the system while a variety of other interesting phenomena such as lattice instability and superconductivity enhancement may be a result of the nesting features appearing upon Si doping. We present also the results of our theoretical calculations of the thermodynamic and transport properties of Al-Si solid solutions which are in good agreement with experiment and reproduce nicely the experimentally observed peculiarities.
PACS: 72.10.-d – Theory of electronic transport; scattering mechanisms
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 2002