Compressive energy of ions in ionic crystals

Abstract

The possibility of writing the repulsive energy in the Born model of binary ionic crystals as a sum of two separate contributions from the two ions has been investigated. Such an approach leads to two identities, one connecting the lattice spacings of a family of ionic crystals and the other connecting their compressibilities. These identities have been tested on the alkali halide crystals over a range of pressures. The agreement is found to be quite satisfactory. Some further predictions with respect to crystals which exist as two polymorphs have also been tested. In all cases, the deviations of the experimental values from the exact identities can be traced to the fact that second neighbour repulsions in the crystals have been neglected. It is hence concluded that individual compressive energies for ions in ionic crystals is a very attractive possibility.