Born-Meyer potential

This potential is called the Born-Meyer potential. The quantity a introduced here is of course not identical with the polarisability. The overall potential for repulsion and attraction is then called the Buckingham potential [1] and is given by... 

FIGURE 2.7 The potential energy of an ionic solid, taking into account the coulombic interaction of the ions and the exponential increase in their repulsion when they are in contact. The minimum potential energy is given by the Born-Meyer equation, Eq. 3. 

Calculation is one of the simplest ways to determine the bulk modulus, as experiments are difficult to perform. At the heart of the calculation is an analytical expression for the potential energy of a crystal in terms of interatomic distances and bond angles. The Born-Meyer function. Equation (2.9), is a simple example of such a function. The potential energy is calculated as a function of interatomic distance, bond angles and other parameters included in the potential energy equation. The interatomic... 

This equation was first used by Born, Huggins, and Meyer and therefore bears their names. The first two terms represent, respectively, the attractive and repulsive potentials. The last two terms represent dipole-dipole and dipole-quadrupole potentials, respectively. In spite of allowing for the dipole interactions, the calculation is still a hard-sphere one, a mean spherical approximation, because the forces are not allowed to change the shape and the position of the particles. Later on, Saboungi et al. 

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