Study of diffusion coefficients in liquid noble metals

Molecular dynamic simulation technique is employed to determine self-diffusion coefficients and activation energies in liquid noble metals due to their importance in the industrial applications. The embedded atom method (EAM) potentials for silver and gold, developed for solid-state simulations, are shown to produce plausible results for liquid state. The simulated values of diffusion coefficients in the liquid state compare very well with the experimental and the calculated reported results. The calculated diffusion data follows Arrhenius equation which enables to find the prefactor and the activation energy for liquid state diffusion. The deduced activation energies of self-diffusion are found close to the experimental values.