Miedema's model is a semi-empirical approach for estimating the heat of formation of solid or
liquid metal
A liquid metal is a metal or a metal alloy which is liquid at or near room temperature.
The only stable liquid elemental metal at room temperature is Mercury (element), mercury (Hg), which is molten above −38.8 °C (234.3 K, −37.9  ...
alloys and compounds in the framework of thermodynamic calculations for metals and minerals. It was developed by the Dutch scientist Andries Rinse Miedema (15 November 1933 – 28 May 1992) while working at
Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium
The Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium (English translation: ''Philips Physics Laboratory'') or NatLab was the Dutch section of the Philips research department, which did research for the product divisions of that company.
In 1975, the NatLab em ...
. It may provide or confirm basic
enthalpy
Enthalpy () is the sum of a thermodynamic system's internal energy and the product of its pressure and volume. It is a state function in thermodynamics used in many measurements in chemical, biological, and physical systems at a constant extern ...
data needed for the calculation of
phase diagrams of metals, via
CALPHAD or
ab initio quantum chemistry methods
''Ab initio'' quantum chemistry methods are a class of computational chemistry techniques based on quantum chemistry that aim to solve the electronic Schrödinger equation. ''Ab initio'' means "from first principles" or "from the beginning", ...
. For a binary system composed by elements A and B, a generic Miedema Formula could be cast as
where terms Phi and nwS are explained and reported below.
For a binary system the physical picture could be simplified by considering a relatively simpler function of the difference of these three physical parameters
resulting in a more complex form
History
Miedema introduced his approach in several papers, beginning in 1973 in ''Philips Technical Review Magazine'' with "A simple model for alloys".
Miedema described his motivation with "Reliable rules for the alloying behaviour of metals have long been sought. There is the qualitative rule that states that the greater the difference in the
electronegativity
Electronegativity, symbolized as , is the tendency for an atom of a given chemical element to attract shared electrons (or electron density) when forming a chemical bond. An atom's electronegativity is affected by both its atomic number and the ...
of two metals, the greater the heat of formation - and hence the stability. Then there is the
Hume-Rothery rule, which states that two metals that differ by more than 15% in their
atomic radius
The atomic radius of a chemical element is a measure of the size of its atom, usually the mean or typical distance from the center of the nucleus to the outermost isolated electron. Since the boundary is not a well-defined physical entity, there ...
will not form substitutional solid solutions. This rule can only be used reliably (90 % success) to predict poor solubility; it cannot predict good solubility. The author has proposed a simple atomic model, which is empirical like the other two rules, but nevertheless has a clear physical basis and predicts the alloying behaviour of transition metals accurately in 98 % of cases. The model is very suitable for graphical presentation of the data and is therefore easy to use in practice."
Free web based applications include Entall and Miedema Calculator. The latter was reviewed and improved in 2016, with an extension of the method.
The original
Algol
ALGOL (; short for "Algorithmic Language") is a family of imperative computer programming languages originally developed in 1958. ALGOL heavily influenced many other languages and was the standard method for algorithm description used by the ...
program was ported to
Fortran.
Informatics-guided classification of miscible and immiscible binary alloy systems
Miedema's approach has been applied to the classification of
miscible
Miscibility () is the property of two substances to mix in all proportions (that is, to fully dissolve in each other at any concentration), forming a homogeneous mixture (a solution). Such substances are said to be miscible (etymologically ...
and immiscible systems of binary alloys. These are relevant in the design of multicomponent alloys. A comprehensive classification of alloying behavior for 813 binary alloy systems consisting of
transition and
lanthanide
The lanthanide () or lanthanoid () series of chemical elements comprises at least the 14 metallic chemical elements with atomic numbers 57–70, from lanthanum through ytterbium. In the periodic table, they fill the 4f orbitals. Lutetium (el ...
metals.
"Impressively, the classification by the miscibility map yields a robust validation on the capability of the well-known Miedema’s theory (95% agreement) and shows good agreement with the HTFP method (90% agreement)."
These 2017 results demonstrate that "a state-of-the art physics-guided
data mining
Data mining is the process of extracting and finding patterns in massive data sets involving methods at the intersection of machine learning, statistics, and database systems. Data mining is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and ...
can provide an efficient pathway for knowledge discovery in the next generation of materials design".
Appendix: Basic Miedema Model Parameters
This Table, reports the three main Miedema parameters for the elements of the
Periodic table
The periodic table, also known as the periodic table of the elements, is an ordered arrangement of the chemical elements into rows (" periods") and columns (" groups"). It is an icon of chemistry and is widely used in physics and other s ...
for whom the model is applicable.
These are original parameters which are after page 24 of the book after F.R. De Boer, R. Boom, W.C.M. Mattens, A.R. Miedema and A.K. Niessen Cohesion in Metals. Transition Metal Alloys (1988),
The above list of parameters should be considered as a starting point, which could yield such data (results after Fortran program made available by Emre Sururi Tasci
improved data may be found in more recent publications; possibly, in the near future, improvement or insisight of these data could be provided by the extended Calphad databases open collections available at NIMS
For instance for Fe-X binary
phase
Phase or phases may refer to:
Science
*State of matter, or phase, one of the distinct forms in which matter can exist
*Phase (matter), a region of space throughout which all physical properties are essentially uniform
*Phase space, a mathematica ...
diagrams, a list of available databases is as presented in this lin
and more specifically in this table:
References
{{Reflist
See also
*
Phase diagram
*
Gibbs energy
In thermodynamics, the Gibbs free energy (or Gibbs energy as the recommended name; symbol is a thermodynamic potential that can be used to calculate the maximum amount of work, other than pressure–volume work, that may be performed by a ther ...
*
CALPHAD
*
Intermetallic
An intermetallic (also called intermetallic compound, intermetallic alloy, ordered intermetallic alloy, long-range-ordered alloy) is a type of metallic alloy that forms an ordered solid-state compound between two or more metallic elements. Inte ...
compound
*
Enthalpy of mixing
In thermodynamics, the enthalpy of mixing (also heat of mixing and excess enthalpy) is the enthalpy liberated or absorbed from a substance upon mixing. When a substance or compound is combined with any other substance or compound, the enthalpy ...
*
Computational thermodynamics
Alloys
Solid-state chemistry
Metallurgy
Materials science
Thermodynamic free energy