Reza Rahemi
University of British Columbia, Canada
Title: A theoretical framework for predicting the temperature variation of the properties of metals established on a feasible electronic basis
Biography
Biography: Reza Rahemi
Abstract
Material properties are affected by temperature. In metals, this variation may be realized as the change in their electronic structures and hence their electron work function. In this article, a simple model is proposed to correlate the work function of metals with temperature. This model, when applied to work function related properties (e.g. Mechanical properties), can explain and predict their variation with temperature. As a sample application, the established relationship is applied to determine the dependence of the Young’s modulus (E) of metals on temperature, which results in an expression for E (T). Another important application of this relationship is to predict the temperature dependence of positron yield from metal surfaces, which is also a property related to the work function. Critical temperatures at which the positron yield from metal surfaces are maxima, are also predicted based on this model. The consistency of the proposed models with experimental observations and the universality of these results have been verified. Portions of these results have been published in R. Rahemi and D.Y. Li, Scripta Materialia 99 (2015) 41–44.