Temperature effects on liquid and crystalline state of SW-Germanium in supercooled region

Abstract

Germanium is one of the important substances existing in liquid, solid or gaseous states at different thermodynamic conditions. It shows interesting behavior in supercooled region including anomalous changes with thermodynamic properties. The pure and crystalline germanium can be considered as semiconductor as it represents a quite similar appearance as elemental silicon. Further, this substance (i.e., Germanium (Ge)) shows many thermodynamic similarities just like silicon, water and various other tetrahedral liquids (i.e., the liquid substance which shows the connection of its central atom with four faces of substituents located at the corners of a tetrahedron in the structure forming a polyhedral angle) which represents density maximum at some certain supercooled states. It is very difficult to simulate this substance at or near the transition temperature ([Formula: see text]) as it shows anomalous dependency with respect to temperature. Therefore, we want to focus our study on this material to understand its detailed behavior in supercooled region. This study represents a detailed analysis on the liquid-crystal phase transition of this substance (germanium) by using the suitable Stillinger–Weber potential model. We performed molecular dynamic (MD) simulation technique with canonical ensemble (NVT) to analyze liquid-crystal phase transition more significantly. Further, we predicted some interesting features of crystalline Germanium and found its stability at or near the transition temperature. The computed results have been found consistent mostly with the literature. This study would be helpful to define the qualitative germanium with consistent thermodynamic conditions at industrial level.