The heat capacity of cadmium telluride at medium and high temperatures

The modified Schomeit method for processing enthalpies (H _T ⁰ -H _298.15 ⁰ ) is suggested, which provides for agreement between high-temperature data on C _p both with a reliably measured value of C _{p, 298.15} ⁰ and with derivative $left( {frac{{partial C_p^0 }}{{partial T}}} right)_{298.15} $ . The latter gives a “smoother” joining of dependences C _p (T) obtained experimentally with different accuracy. The suggested procedure is applied to analysis of experimentally obtained distributions of heat capacity of cadmium telluride as a function of temperature, and a new approximating equation is obtained for the most reliable data in the range from 298 K to the melting point of CdTe. This procedure is compared to other known methods of simultaneous processing of C _p (T) data. It is demonstrated that the values of heat capacity of CdTe recommended by us agree with reliably determined coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) of this compound. The characteristic Debye temperature of cadmium telluride is estimated in a wide temperature range, and the pattern of its variation with temperature is analyzed.