APS » PROLA » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 74 » Issue 16

Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 3225 - 3228 (1995)

van Hove Singularity Induced L11 Ordering in CuPt

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J. F. Clark1, F. J. Pinski1, D. D. Johnson2, P. A. Sterne3, J. B. Staunton4, and B. Ginatempo5
1Department of Physics, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 45221
2Computational Materials Science Department, MS 9161, Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, California 94551
3Department of Physics, University of California, Davis, California 95616
and Department of Chemistry and Materials Science, L-268, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94551
4Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry CV7 4AL, United Kingdom
5Istituto di Fisica Teorica, Università di Messina, Messina, Italy

Received 6 June 1994

We describe an ordering mechanism that arises due to coupling between electronic states at van Hove singularities. This novel mechanism, which naturally leads to ordered structures with small unit cells, couples states near the Fermi energy which are localized at high-symmetry points in k space, in contrast to the conventional mechanism which relies on large parallel sheets of Fermi surface. Using first-principles calculations of the electronic structure of ordered and disordered alloys, we show that this mechanism drives the unusual short- and long-range order found in fcc CuPt.


©1995 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v74/p3225
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.74.3225
PACS: 71.20.Cf, 64.60.Cn, 75.40.Cx

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