Eur. Phys. J. B 27, 119-126 (2002)
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

Abstract

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.