Empirical description of the role of electronegativity in alloy formation

Abstract

Empirical correlations are established, which demonstrate that the heat of formation of metallic binary alloy systems is predominantly determined by the electronegativity difference, the difference in electronic density at the boundary of the atomic cell and the size difference, the third term being absent for compounds. The work function of a metal is recommended as a measure for its electronegativity. The electron density at the cell boundary is shown to be related to the compressibility of the pure metal. The consequences of the energy effects for quantitative descriptions of charge transfer in metallic alloys are discussed extensively.