Self diffusion in liquid aluminium

Here we report temperature dependent self-diffusion coefficients of liquid aluminium measured on absolute scale by using incoherent quasielastic neutron scattering at temperatures of 980K, 1020K, and 1060K. Aluminium self-diffusion coefficients follow an Arrhenius law with an activation energy of 280±70 meV. The Sutherland-Einstein equation relating viscosity to the diffusion coefficient well captures the temperature dependence and absolute values of the here reported aluminium self-diffusion coefficients using the covalent radius of aluminium. A comparison to published molecular dynamics simulation data helps to further narrow down the choice of the potential.