The thermodynamics and phase diagrams of the Cd-Hg and Cd-Hg-Te systems

Measurements made of the enthalpies of formation of the intermetallic compounds in the systems have been combined with information available from the literature on the unary data, the phase diagrams of the constituent systems and on the partial Gibbs functions to develop a thermodynamic description of Cd-Hg-Te alloys. This work has used the optimisation program developed by Dr H-L. Lukas of the Max Planck Institut für Metallforschung, Stuttgart, the associated liquid model published by Dr F. Sommer of the same Institute and the MTDATA suite of programs developed at the National Physical Laboratory. The description gives excellent agreement with the available experimental data and the presentation is illustrated with computed binary and ternary phase diagrams, concentrations of the species assumed in the liquid phase and vapour pressures for the solid-liquid equilibria associated with CdxHg1−xTe.