Thermophysical properties and structure of stable and metastable liquid cobalt

The thermophysical properties and structure of liquid cobalt are investigated in the temperature range from 1000 to 2400 K. The properties include density, molar volume, enthalpy and specific heat at both normal and undercooled states. The density decreases linearly with the increase of temperature. At the melting point, the value of density is 7.71 g cm(-3). and its temperature coefficient is -7.68 x 10(-4) g cm(-3) K-1. The molar volume increases with the increase of temperature in a nonlinear manner. The enthalpy increases linearly with the rise of temperature. This indicates that the specific heat changes little with temperature: 40.11 J mol(-1) K-1. Furthermore, the liquid structure is Studied by analyzing the pair correlation function. With the increase of undercooling, the degree of short range order of liquid cobalt becomes more and more remarkable, which is deduced by the appearance of a saddle at the second neighbor distance. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.