Computational thermodynamic modeling of the Mg-B system

It has been recently discovered that the compound MgB2 possesses superconductivity at 39K. To better design and control the fabrication of the MgB2 compound, a complete thermodynamic description of the system is desirable. In the present work, the phase equilibria and thermodynamic properties of the binary Mg-B system were analyzed and a complete thermodynamic description of the binary system was obtained by means of the CALPHAD technique using a computerized optimization procedure. The thermodynamic descriptions of pure Mg and B elements were taken from the literature. Based on the experimental data, three binary intermetallic compounds, MgB2, MgB4 and MgB6, were considered. Good agreement was obtained between the calculated results and the available experimental data in the literature.