The structure of liquid eutectic Pd-Si by X-ray and neutron study

A structure study of the liquid Pd0.825Si0.175 alloy has been performed by X-ray and neutron diffraction. As the contribution of the Si pairs to the scattered intensity is very small, the partial interference functions have been evaluated for the Pd-Pd and Pd-Si atomic pairs and compared with those obtained from a hard sphere model. The partial interference function JPd-Pd is very similar to that deduced from the Percus-Yevick calculation but the agreement is not as good for the Pd-Si pairs. This may be due to the fact that the chosen model only takes into account the size effect between the particles and does not include their chemical interaction.