Viscosity of liquid K-Hg alloys

Abstract

Abstract The viscosity of liquid K-Hg alloys was measured over the whole concentration range from about 70° to 400°C. The observed data show a strong maximum at 27 at. % K, but no extreme value at 7 at. % K corresponding to the strong minimum observed in the thermoelectric power measurements. The experimental results are compared with calculated values obtained by the distribution function method for the viscosity of liquid mixtures. The interionic potentials are computed by means of the pseudopotential method, and the partial pair correlation functions are calculated by using not only the Percus-Yevick solutions for a mixture of hard-sphere fluids but also those corrected simply for the effect of charge transfer between Hg and K atoms. The calculation is in qualitative agreement with the experimental concentration dependence, suggesting the importance of effect of charge transfer among the atoms.