On the Determination of Molar Heat Capacity of Transition Elements: From the Absolute Zero to the Melting Point

Abstract

Molar specific heat is one of the most important thermophysical properties to determine the sensible heat, heat of transformation, enthalpy, entropy, thermal conductivity, and many other physical properties present in several fields of physics, chemistry, materials science, metallurgy, and engineering. Recently, a model was proposed to calculate the Density of State by limiting the total number of modes by solid–liquid and solid–solid phase nucleation and by the entropy associated with phase transition. In this model, the new formulation of Debye’s equation encompasses the phonic, electronic, and rotational energies contributions to the molar heat capacity of the solids. Anomalies observed in the molar specific heat capacity, such as thermal, magnetic, configurational transitions, and electronic, can be treated by their transitional entropies. Model predictions are compared with experimental scatter for transitional elements.