Article contents
Plutonium Elastic Moduli, Electron Localization, and Temperature
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2011
Abstract
In almost all materials, compression is accompanied naturally by stiffening. Even in materials with zero or negative thermal expansion, where warming is accompanied by volume contraction it is the volume change that primarily controls elastic stiffness. Not so in the metal plutonium. In plutonium, alloying with gallium can change the sign of thermal expansion, but for the positive-thermal-expansion monoclinic phase as well as the face-centered-cubic phase with either sign of thermal expansion, and the orthorhombic phase, recent measurements of elastic moduli show soften on warming by an order of magnitude more than expected, the shear and compressional moduli track, and volume seems irrelevant. These effects point toward a novel mechanism for electron localization, and have important implication for the pressure dependence of the bulk compressibility.
Keywords
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Materials Research Society 2008
References
- 2
- Cited by