First-Principles Investigations on Structural, Elastic, and Thermodynamic Properties of Ce-La Alloys Under High Pressure

Abstract

The structural stability, thermodynamic, elastic, and electronic properties of cerium (Ce)- lanthanum (La) alloys were investigated for different Ce/La ratios under pressure by first-principles calculations using on-the-fly (OTF) pseudopotential and general gradient approximation (GGA). The ground-state properties of lanthanum and cerium obtained by minimizing the total energy agree favourably with other work.We derived the elastic constants, bulk modulus, and shear modulus of the La-Ce alloys for different Ce/La ratios. Using the quasi-harmonic Debye model, the thermodynamic properties of the La-Ce alloys including the thermal expansion coefficient α and heat capacity Cv are successfully obtained in the temperature range from 0 K to 1000 K. Furthermore, the electronic properties such as density of states and charge densities were also studied.