Properties of liquid group-V elements: A numerical tight-binding simulation

Abstract

We present a calculation of the structure of liquid As and Sb obtained from the electronic structure described in the tight-binding approximation. We find pair correlation functions of liquid As and Sb in excellent agreement with the experimental data. We show that the structure of liquid As still shows a Peierls distortion whereas liquid Sb is no longer distorted. In our model, the difference between As and Sb can be attributed to a harder repulsive potential of Sb which penalizes the Peierls distortion.