Study on the Thermodynamic Properties of Thin Film of FCC Interstitial Alloy AuSi at Zero Pressure Using the Statistical Moment Method

Abstract

We built a model and proposed a theory about the thermodynamic properties of face-centered cubic (FCC) binary interstitial alloy’s thin films based on the statistical moment method and performed numerical calculations for AuSi (gold silicide). First, the statistical moment method (SMM) calculations for the thermodynamic properties of Au are compared with reported experiments and calculations that show a good agreement between the calculations in this paper and earlier studies. Additionally, the SMM calculations for thermodynamic properties of AuSi alloy films are performed, which show that the thermal expansion coefficient, the specific heat at constant volume, and the specific heat at constant pressure increases, while the isothermal elastic modulus decreases with increasing temperature and increasing interstitial atom concentration. Furthermore, when the number of layers reaches 100, the thermodynamic properties of the film are similar to those of the bulk material. The achieved theoretical results for AuSi films are novel and can be useful in designing future experiments.