Equilibrium Bond Lengths in Monoatomic Lattices of Metal Atoms as Function of Coordination Number

A recent work of Schmidt and Springborg on one-dimensional chains of metal atoms has prompted us to use a quantum-chemical model, posed in terms of dimer potential energy curves, to analyze equlibrium near-neighbour distances r0 as a function of local coordination number c. For five monoatomic metal atoms, H, K, Al, Pb and Bi, values of r0 are available for three or more different lattices. The increase of r0 from the dimer value correlates with c1=2 in the same general manner for four of the five atoms considered, Al being the exceptional case according to present theoretical calculations.