An interpretation on the thermodynamic properties of liquid Pb–Te alloys

The bonding character of liquid lead telluride PbTe\text{PbTe} is thermodynamically investigated in detail. Its possibility as an ionic melt composed of cation Pb2+{\text{Pb}}^{2+} and anion Te2−{\text{Te}}^{2-} is not acceptable, by comparing the ionization energy of Pb\text{Pb} atom, electron affinity of Te\text{Te} atom and the ionic bonding energy due to the cation Pb2+{\text{Pb}}^{2+} and anion Te2−{\text{Te}}^{2-} with the help of structural information. Solid lead telluride PbTe as a narrow band gap semiconductor might yield easily the overlapping of the tail of valence band and that of conduction one. And on melting, it becomes to an ill-conditioned metallic state, which concept is supported by the electrical behaviors of liquid Pb–Te alloys observed by the present authors. As structural information tells us about the partial remain of some sorts of covalent-type mono-dipole and poly-dipole of the molecule PbTe\text{PbTe}, all systems are thermodynamically explained in terms of a mixture of these molecules and cations Pb4+{\text{Pb}}^{4+} and Te2+{\text{Te}}^{2+} and a small amount of the conduction electrons are set free from these elements based on the ternary solution model.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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