Electronic transport properties of some liquid metals and alloys.

Measurements have been made of the resistivity of liquid nickel-cobalt and silver-palladium alloys as a function of composition and temperature together with some measurements on these systems in the solid state and a measurement of the thermoelectric power of a single liquid silver-palladium alloy as a function of temperature. Experiments have also been performed to determine the resistivity and thermoelectric power of liquid antimony as a function of temperature, and of liquid nickel-tellurium alloys as a function of temperature and composition. Apparatus has been developed to enable such experiments to be undertaken. In those cases where information is available, the results obtained here are generally in agreement with other experimental data. Approximate expressions can be derived from a single site resonant scattering model which give the resistivity of suitable liquid transition metal alloys in terms of the resistivities of the pure components, and give the thermoelectric power of the alloy in terms of the resistivities and thermoelectric powers of the pure components and the resistivity of the alloy. Predictions derived using these expressions have been compared with the experimental data: this comparison indicates that the theory in its present form provides, at best, only a qualitative account of the observed transport properties of liquid transition metal alloys. Calculations based on a percolation model of electronic transport in inhomogeneous liquids have been performed in an attempt to understand the experimentally observed variation of resistivity with concentration in the nickel-tellurium alloy system. Such a model appears to provide a reasonable qualitative description of the experimental data for the tellurium-rich alloys.