Universal scaling laws of diffusion: Application to liquid metals

This work focuses on the universal scaling laws, which relate scaled diffusivity to excess entropy in fluids and their mixtures. The derivation of the new scaling law for diffusivity proposed recently [A. Samanta, Sk. M. Ali, and S. K. Ghosh, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 145901 (2004)] is discussed in details highlighting the nature of approximations involved. Also the applicability of the scaling law is extended to a new class of liquids, viz., liquid metals. The results calculated based on the scaling laws are shown to be in very good agreement with the simulation results for liquid Rb and Cs metals along the liquid-vapor coexistence curve corresponding to a wide variation of temperature and density. The new universal scaling law discussed here is superior to the earlier empirically proposed scaling laws and provides a very simple route to calculate a dynamical quantity such as diffusivity from an equilibrium property such as the radial distribution function. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics.