Date of Award:

12-2020

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Physics

Committee Chair(s)

D. Mark Riffe

Committee

D. Mark Riffe

Committee

Charles Torre

Committee

T. C. Shen

Abstract

Understanding the thermal properties of materials is essential to using those materials for technological advancement which can benefit civilization. For example, it has been proposed that essential components of tokamaks, devices which perform fusion, be made out of tungsten with a thin layer of lithium on the surface. To that end, this thesis seeks to calculate the thermal properties of a layer of alkali atoms, like lithium and sodium, on tungsten and molybdenum substrates. We use an Embedded Atom Method (EAM) model to perform our calculations. This type of model has been widely used to describe the interaction between atoms of the same type (i.e., how two lithium atoms interact). There is also a standard prescription for building the interaction between two atoms of different types (i.e., how a lithium atom and a tungsten atom interact). However, we have discovered that the prescription fails when trying to describe the interaction of atoms with much different sizes. To remedy this, we explore several different types of models and compare their results.

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