First-principles study of liquid gallium at ambient and high pressure

Resolving decades of debate: the surprising role of high-temperature covalency in the structure of liquid gallium

Liquid metals (LMs) have the potential to revolutionise many important technologies, ranging from battery components to catalytic reactions. Low melting temperature gallium (Ga) is particularly promising as a solvent in many LM alloys, due to the low energy cost of maintaining its liquid state. However, despite 30+ years of study on the nature of Ga's liquid structure, it remains enigmatic with significant disagreement among the many published reports. In this work, we reconcile many of the conflicts through analysis of extensive ab initio molecular dynamics simulations of bulk Ga liquid at different temperatures. Contrary to previous assumptions, covalency becomes more important in the liquid at higher temperatures, meaning that covalency is not a significant feature of the liquid near the phase transition temperature. This explains the experimental observation of a decrease of resistivity of the metal upon melting, and its subsequent anomalously nonlinear increase with temperature. This revised understanding of structuring in the liquid has implications for the way these alloys are tailored for specific applications in the rapidly developing field of LMs.

Liquid Crystal Structure of Supercooled Liquid Gallium and Eutectic Gallium-Indium

Understanding the origin of structural ordering in supercooled liquid gallium (Ga) has been a great scientific quest in the past decades. Here, reflective polarized optical microscopy on Ga sandwiched between glasses treated with rubbed polymers reveals the onset of an anisotropic reflection at 120 °C that increases on cooling and persists down to room temperature or below. The polymer rubbing usually aligns the director of thermotropic liquid crystals (LCs) parallel to the rubbing direction. On the other hand, when Ga is sandwiched between substrates that align conventional LC molecules normal to the surface, the reflection is isotropic, but mechanical shear force induces anisotropic reflection that relaxes in seconds. Such alignment effects and shear-induced realignment are typical to conventional thermotropic LCs and indicate a LC structure of liquid Ga. Specifically, Ga textures obtained by atomic force and scanning electron microscopy reveal the existence of a lamellar structure corresponding to a smectic LC phase, while the nanometer-thin lamellar structure is transparent under transmission polarized optical microscopy. Such spatial molecular arrangements may be attributed to dimer molecular entities in the supercooled liquid Ga. The LC structure observation of electrically conductive liquid Ga can provide new opportunities in materials science and LC applications.

Extended short-range order determines the overall structure of liquid gallium

Polyvalent metal melts (gallium, tin, bismuth, etc.) have microscopic structural features, which are detected by neutron and X-ray diffraction and which are absent in simple liquids.

Dynamics on next-neighbour distances in liquid and undercooled gallium

Density fluctuations of liquid and 20 K undercooled gallium have been studied by neutron spectroscopy. The decay of density fluctuations has been recorded at the structure factor maximum over a wide temperature range up to twice the melting temperature. The amplitude of the scattering function falls off with rising temperature in a nonlinear way with a changing slope around [Formula: see text]. The derived generalized longitudinal viscosity shows an upturn with decreasing temperature in the same temperature range. This increase in viscosity can be understood that liquid gallium transforms from a more fluid liquid metal to a more viscous liquid metal in that temperature range upon cooling. The change in the amplitude shows a remarkable agreement with results from liquid aluminium, lead and rubidium. This study suggests a universal crossover in dynamics of liquid monatomic metals, despite the many peculiar properties of gallium.

Liquid metals: fundamentals and applications in chemistry

Post-transition elements, together with zinc-group metals and their alloys belong to an emerging class of materials with fascinating characteristics originating from their simultaneous metallic and liquid natures. These metals and alloys are characterised by having low melting points (i.e. between room temperature and 300 °C), making their liquid state accessible to practical applications in various fields of physical chemistry and synthesis. These materials can offer extraordinary capabilities in the synthesis of new materials, catalysis and can also enable novel applications including microfluidics, flexible electronics and drug delivery. However, surprisingly liquid metals have been somewhat neglected by the wider research community. In this review, we provide a comprehensive overview of the fundamentals underlying liquid metal research, including liquid metal synthesis, surface functionalisation and liquid metal enabled chemistry. Furthermore, we discuss phenomena that warrant further investigations in relevant fields and outline how liquid metals can contribute to exciting future applications.

Local structure of liquid gallium under pressure

In situ high energy X-ray pair distribution function (PDF) measurements, microtomography and reverse Monte Carlo simulations were used to characterize the local structure of liquid gallium up to 1.9 GPa. This pressure range includes the well-known solid-solid phase transition from Ga-I to Ga-II at low temperature. In term of previous research, the local structure of liquid gallium within this domain was suggested a mixture of two local structures, Ga I and Ga II, based on fitting experimental PDF to known crystal structure, with a controversy. However, our result shows a distinctly different result that the local structure of liquid gallium resembles the atomic arrangement of both gallium phase II and III (the high pressure crystalline phase). A melting mechanism is proposed for Ga, in which the atomic structure of phase Ι breaks up at the onset of melting, providing sufficient free volume for atoms to rearrange, to form the melt.

Pressure-induced structural change in liquid GaIn eutectic alloy

Synchrotron x-ray diffraction reveals a pressure induced crystallization at about 3.4 GPa and a polymorphic transition near 10.3 GPa when compressed a liquid GaIn eutectic alloy up to ~13 GPa at room temperature in a diamond anvil cell. Upon decompression, the high pressure crystalline phase remains almost unchanged until it transforms to the liquid state at around 2.3 GPa. The ab initio molecular dynamics calculations can reproduce the low pressure crystallization and give some hints on the understanding of the transition between the liquid and the crystalline phase on the atomic level. The calculated pair correlation function g(r) shows a non-uniform contraction reflected by the different compressibility between the short (1st shell) and the intermediate (2nd to 4th shells). It is concluded that the pressure-induced liquid-crystalline phase transformation likely arises from the changes in local atomic packing of the nearest neighbors as well as electronic structures at the transition pressure.

Analysis of local bond-orientational order for liquid gallium at ambient pressure: Two types of cluster structures

In terms of the local bond-orientational order (LBOO) parameters, a cluster approach to analyze local structures of simple liquids was developed. In this approach, a cluster is defined as a combination of neighboring seeds having at least nb local-orientational bonds and their nearest neighbors, and a cluster ensemble is a collection of clusters with a specified nb and number of seeds ns. This cluster analysis was applied to investigate the microscopic structures of liquid Ga at ambient pressure (AP). The liquid structures studied were generated through ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. By scrutinizing the static structure factors (SSFs) of cluster ensembles with different combinations of nb and ns, we found that liquid Ga at AP contained two types of cluster structures, one characterized by sixfold orientational symmetry and the other showing fourfold orientational symmetry. The SSFs of cluster structures with sixfold orientational symmetry were akin to the SSF of a hard-sphere fluid. On the contrary, the SSFs of cluster structures showing fourfold orientational symmetry behaved similarly as the anomalous SSF of liquid Ga at AP, which is well known for exhibiting a high-q shoulder. The local structures of a highly LBOO cluster whose SSF displayed a high-q shoulder were found to be more similar to the structure of β-Ga than those of other solid phases of Ga. More generally, the cluster structures showing fourfold orientational symmetry have an inclination to resemble more to β-Ga.

High pressure chemistry of thioaldehydes: A first-principles molecular dynamics study

First-principles molecular dynamics simulations are used to investigate the chemical behavior of bulk thioacetaldehyde (MeC(H)S) in response to changes in pressure, P. The simulations show that these molecules oligomerize in response to applied P. Oligomerization is initiated through C-S bond formation, with constrained dynamics simulations showing that the barrier to this reaction step is lowered significantly by applied P. Subsequent reactions involving the formation of additional C-S bonds or radical processes that lead to S-S and C-C bonds lengthen the oligomers. Oligomerization is terminated through proton transfer or the formation of rings. The mechanistic details of all reactions are examined. The results indicate that the P-induced reactivity of the MeC(H)S-based system differs significantly from that of analogous MeC(H)O-based systems, which have been reported previously. Comparison with the MeC(H)O study shows that replacing oxygen with sulfur significantly lowers the P required to initiate oligomerization (from 26 GPa to 5 GPa), increases the types of reactions in which systems of this type can take part, and increases the variety of products formed through these reactions. These differences can be explained in terms of the electronic structures of these systems, which may be useful for certain high P applications.

Pressure-induced emergence of unusually high-frequency transverse excitations in a liquid alkali metal: Evidence of two types of collective excitations contributing to the transverse dynamics at high pressures

Unlike phonons in crystals, the collective excitations in liquids cannot be treated as propagation of harmonic displacements of atoms around stable local energy minima. The viscoelasticity of liquids, reflected in transition from the adiabatic to elastic high-frequency speed of sound and in absence of the long-wavelength transverse excitations, results in dispersions of longitudinal (L) and transverse (T) collective excitations essentially different from the typical phonon ones. Practically, nothing is known about the effect of high pressure on the dispersion of collective excitations in liquids, which causes strong changes in liquid structure. Here dispersions of L and T collective excitations in liquid Li in the range of pressures up to 186 GPa were studied by ab initio simulations. Two methodologies for dispersion calculations were used: direct estimation from the peak positions of the L/T current spectral functions and simulation-based calculations of wavenumber-dependent collective eigenmodes. It is found that at ambient pressure, the longitudinal and transverse dynamics are well separated, while at high pressures, the transverse current spectral functions, density of vibrational states, and dispersions of collective excitations yield evidence of two types of propagating modes that contribute strongly to transverse dynamics. Emergence of the unusually high-frequency transverse modes gives evidence of the breakdown of a regular viscoelastic theory of transverse dynamics, which is based on coupling of a single transverse propagating mode with shear relaxation. The explanation of the observed high-frequency shift above the viscoelastic value is given by the presence of another branch of collective excitations. With the pressure increasing, coupling between the two types of collective excitations is rationalized within a proposed extended viscoelastic model of transverse dynamics.

Thermodynamic properties of liquid gallium from picosecond acoustic velocity measurements

Due to discrepancies in the literature data the thermodynamic properties of liquid gallium are still in debate. Accurate measurements of adiabatic sound velocities as a function of pressure and temperature have been obtained by the combination of laser picosecond acoustics and surface imaging on sample loaded in diamond anvil cell. From these results the thermodynamic parameters of gallium have been extracted by a numerical procedure up to 10 GPa and 570 K. It is demonstrated that a Murnaghan equation of state accounts well for the whole data set since the isothermal bulk modulus BT has been shown to vary linearly with pressure in the whole temperature range. No evidence for a previously reported liquid-liquid transition has been found in the whole pressure and temperature range explored.

The dimeric nature of bonding in gallium: from small clusters to the α-gallium phase

We consider the structural similarity of small gallium clusters to the bulk structure of α-gallium, which has been previously described as a molecular metal, via density functional theory-based computations. Previous calculations have shown that the tetramer, the hexamer, and the octamer of gallium are all structurally similar to the α-phase. We perform an analysis of the bonding in these clusters in terms of the molecular orbitals and atoms in molecules description in order to assess whether we can see similarities at these sizes to the bonding pattern, which is ascribed to the co-existence of covalent and metallic bonding in the bulk. The singlet Ga4 and Ga8 clusters can be constructed in a singlet ground state from the Ga-dimers in the first excited triplet state of the Ga2-molecule, the (3)Σg(-) state. Molecular orbital (MO) analysis confirms that the dimer is an essential building block of these small clusters. Comparison of the AIM characteristics of the bonds within the clusters to the bonds in the bulk α-phase supports the identification of the covalent bond in the bulk as related to the (3)Σg(-) state of the dimer.

Electrical, thermal, and species transport properties of liquid eutectic Ga-In and Ga-In-Sn from first principles

Using ab initio molecular dynamics, the atomic structure and transport properties of eutectic Ga-In and Ga-In-Sn are investigated. The Kubo-Greenwood (K-G) and the Ziman-Faber (Z-F) formulations and the Wiedemann-Franz (W-F) law are used for the electrical and electronic thermal conductivity. The species diffusivity and the viscosity are also predicted using the mean square displacement and the Stokes-Einstein (S-E) relation. Alloying Ga causes more disordered structure, i.e., broadening the atomic distance near the In and Sn atoms, which reduces the transport properties and the melting temperature. The K-G treatment shows excellent agreement with the experimental results while Z-F treatment formula slightly overestimates the electrical conductivity. The predicted thermal conductivity also shows good agreement with the experiments. The species diffusivity and the viscosity are slightly reduced by the alloying of Ga with In and Sn atoms. Good agreements are found with available experimental results and new predicted transport-property results are provided.

Negative expansions of interatomic distances in metallic melts

When a material is heated, generally, it dilates. Here, we find a general trend that the average distance between a center atom and atoms in the first nearest-neighbor shell contracts for several metallic melts upon heating. Using synchrotron X-ray diffraction technique and molecular dynamics simulations, we elucidate that this anomaly is caused by the redistribution of polyhedral clusters affected by temperature. In metallic melts, the high-coordinated polyhedra are inclined to evolve into low-coordinated ones with increasing temperature. As the coordination number decreases, the average atomic distance between a center atom and atoms in the first shell of polyhedral clusters is reduced. This phenomenon is a ubiquitous feature for metallic melts consisting of various-sized polyhedra. This finding sheds light on the understanding of atomic structures and thermal behavior of disordered materials and will trigger more experimental and theoretical studies of liquids, amorphous alloys, glasses, and casting temperature effect on solidification process of crystalline materials.

Neutral and charged gallium clusters: structures, physical properties and implications for the melting features

We report the putative Global Minimum (GM) structures and electronic properties of Ga(N)(+), Ga(N) and Ga(N)(-) clusters with N = 13-37 atoms, obtained from first-principles density functional theory structural optimizations. The calculations include spin polarization and employ an exchange-correlation functional which accounts for van der Waals dispersion interactions (vdW-DFT). We find a wide diversity of structural motifs within the located GM, including decahedral, polyicosahedral, polytetrahedral and layered structures. The GM structures are also extremely sensitive to the number of electrons in the cluster, so that the structures of neutral and charged clusters differ for most sizes. The main magic numbers (clusters with an enhanced stability) are identified and interpreted in terms of electronic and geometric shell closings. The theoretical results are consistent with experimental abundance mass spectra of Ga(N)(+) and with photoelectron spectra of Ga(N)(-). The size dependence of the latent heats of melting, the shape of the heat capacity peaks, and the temperature dependence of the collision cross-sections, all measured for Ga(N)(+) clusters, are properly interpreted in terms of the calculated cohesive energies, spectra of configurational excitations, and cluster shapes, respectively. The transition from "non-melter" to "magic-melter" behaviour, experimentally observed between Ga(30)(+) and Ga(31)(+), is traced back to a strong geometry change. Finally, the higher-than-bulk melting temperatures of gallium clusters are correlated with a more typically metallic behaviour of the clusters as compared to the bulk, contrary to previous theoretical claims.