Solid-liquid interface free energies of pure bcc metals and B2 phases

The solid-liquid interface (SLI) free energy was determined from molecular dynamics (MD) simulation for several body centered cubic (bcc) metals and B2 metallic compounds (space group: Pm (3) over barm; prototype: CsCl). In order to include a bcc metal with a low melting temperature in our study, a semi-empirical potential was developed for Na. Two additional synthetic Na potentials were also developed to explore the effect of liquid structure and latent heat on the SLI free energy. The obtained MD data were compared with the empirical Turnbull, Laird, and Ewing relations. All three relations are found to predict the general trend observed in the MD data for bcc metals obtained within the present study. However, only the Laird and Ewing relations are able to predict the trend obtained within the sequence of Na potentials. The Laird relation provides the best prediction for our MD data and other MD data for bcc metals taken from the literature. Overall, the Laird relation also agrees well with our B2 data but requires a proportionality constant that is substantially different from the bcc case. It also fails to explain a considerable difference between the SLI free energies of some B2 phases which have nearly the same melting temperature. In contrast, this difference is satisfactorily described by the Ewing relation. Moreover, the Ewing relation obtained from the bcc dataset also provides a reasonable description of the B2 data. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.