2.1. Normal Mode Frequencies in Three Dimensions
Every type of lattice has its own characteristic mode or frequencies of vibration called normal modes. In three dimension, for a mass m at the origin 0, the equation of motion corresponding to the displacement of atom can be generalized as
If we use and as coefficient to represent the Cartesian components of the vectors, the force equation (2.3) can be written as:
(The minus sign is introduced simply for convenience).
There are now three equation of motion for each atom, corresponding to the three degree of freedom.
And the three- dimensional form of a plane wave is
Therefore equation (2.5) becomes
To facilitate the generalization to a limit cell containing more than one atom, it is convenient to make two new definitions at this point.
Substituting equation (2.8) into (2.7) becomes
Or in the matrix form
This is a typical eigenvalue problem and the solutions for are the roots of the determinant equation.
D in equation (2.10) is known as the dynamical matrix, and the determinant us called the secular determinant (Venkataraman, et al ,1974) .
Equation (2.10) is obtained from the equation (2.9) and the roots are the Eigen-values of . In general, the dynamical matrix for a lattice with basis of n atoms has 3n x3n dimensions which assumes the general form
Where are elements of the dynamical matrix, q is the wave-vector confirmed to the first Brilliouin zone; I is a limit matrix of order and m is the ionic mass (Born and Huang; 1954).
In more explicit terms, equation (2.12) may be written as:
are unit polarization vectors which satisfy the orthogonality condition that
Where
Equation (2.13) is the matrix representation of the expression that will be required to solve in order to determine the phonon dispersion relations in the symmetry directions in a cubic crystal. The dynamical matrix is given in equation (2.4). In a metal, there are three contributions to the dynamical matrix associated with the effective potential between the ions. These contributions are the columbic , the Born-mayer ,,and the electronic band structure, ,contributions, respestively (Animalu, 1977). The columbic contribution arises from the long –range columbic interaction between bare ions. The repulsive Born-Mayer contribution is associated with ions and it arises from the overlap of the core electron wave function on neighboring. The electronic contribution is associated with the indirect ion – electron – ion interaction via the polarization field of the conduction or valence electrons.
The electronic contribution depends on the Pseudo-potential carried rigidly by the ions, i.e on the electron-phonon coupling matrix (Sham and Ziman, 1963).
We may then write notionally as a sum of the three components i.e
While the first two contributions can be handled in real space, the last component is more conveniently handled in the reciprocal lattice space.(Okoye 2002).
The phonon frequencies w2 are obtained when the elements of the dynamical matrix are substituted in equation (2.8). On solving equation (2.8) three homogeneous equations in three unknowns equations, are obtained . The solutions corresponding to are determined by finding the roots of the determinant equation in equation (2.9); these roots determine the phonon frequencies. If the value of is negative the value of becomes imaginary and the atomic motion increases exponentially with time, thus causing instability in the crystal structure. Also, if the phonon frequency is reduced and eventually comes to zero, then such a mode is called soft phonon mode (Srivastava, 1990). The presence of a soft mode crystal deforms the original crystal structure in favour of a more stable structure (Baroni et al, 2001).
In our recent work we studied Lattice Dynamics in some FCC Metals using the following metals Nickel (Ni) and Platinium (Pt) Enaroseha et al (2021a); Aluminium(Au) and Copper(Cu) Enaroseha et al (2021b); and Lead (Pb) and Palladium(Pd) Enaroseha et al (2021c) as well as AgGaS2 and AgGaSe2 (Omehe and Enaroseha)