First-principles phonon calculations of thermodynamic properties for ductile rare-earth intermetallic compounds

The thermodynamic properties of ductile rare-earth intermetallic compounds YAg and YCu with CsCl-type B2 structure have been studied by performing density-functional theory (DFT) and density-functional perturbation theory (DFPT). To judge that our computational method is reasonable, NiAl has also been investigated in comparisons with experimental data and previous theoretical results. Phonon dispersions and density of states are studied, and it is found that the density of states is mostly composed of Y states both in YAg and YCu at high frequencies. The temperature dependence of various quantities such as the thermal expansion, the isothermal bulk modulus, and the heat capacity is computed under the quasi-harmonic approximation (QHA), and the variation features of these quantities are discussed in detail. From these results, we demonstrate that the intermetallics with better ductility have larger thermal expansions.