Local bond average for the thermally induced lattice expansion.

An approach of local bond average (LBA) has been developed by extending the bond-order-length-strength correlation (Sun, C. Q. Prog. Solid State Chem. 2007 , 35, 1- 159 ) to temperature domain for the mechanism of the thermally driven bond expansion in a solid specimen. It is shown that the detectable quantities of a solid can be connected directly to the bonding identities and the response of the bonding identities to the stimulus of temperature change, being free from using the concepts in classical thermodynamics or hypothetical constants. The success of the LBA approach has been evidenced by fitting the observations from a number of specimens with derived information of atomic cohesive energy, which may go beyond the currently available approaches.