Improving the understanding of the melting behaviour of Mo, Ta, and W at extreme pressures

We discuss the existing conflicts between experimentally measured and theoretically calculated melting curves of Mo, Ta, and W. By assuming that vacancy formation plays a fundamental role in the melting process, an explanation for the measured melting curves is provided. Furthermore, we show that the Lindemann law fits well all the measured melting curves of BCC transition metals if the Gruneisen parameter is written as a power series of the interatomic distance. For completeness, we examine possible reasons for current disagreements between shock-wave and DAC experiments. To solve them, we propose the existence of an extra high P-T phase for Mo, Ta, and W. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.