Electronic structure of liquid and amorphous alloys with clusters

Some metallic alloys exhibit strong dependencies of their transport coefficients composition (e.g., TlTe), the conductivity going through a sharp minimum at the composition of an intermetallic compound and the thermopower changing its sign at the same time. We present a simple model which explains these dependencies. Our main assumption is that clustering effects are important. They lead to the appearance of a pseudogap in the density of states. This model is subsequently combined with percolation theory to estimate the conductivity and the thermopower.