The Electrical Properties of Disordered Metals

An introductory treatment of the electrical properties of disordered metals, first published in 1995.

J. S. Dugdale (Author)

9780521268820, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 October 1995

256 pages, 64 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.512 kg

"...the important ideas and experiments in this book are effectively explained in understandable physical terms and backed up with straight forward calculations. It succeeds in describing the potentially daunting theory of transport in disordered conductors in a highly intuitive way that will appeal very much to beginning graduate or advanced undergraduate students or interested non-experts in physics, materials science, chemistry, or electrical engineering." Nathan Israeloff, Materials Research Bulletin

The theory of how metals conduct electronically had for a long time been confined to metals that are crystalline with the constituent atoms in regular arrays. The discovery of how to make solid amorphous alloys led to an explosion of measurements of the electronic properties of these new materials, and the emergence of a range of interesting low temperature phenomena. This 1995 book describes in physical terms the theory of the electrical conductivity, Hall coefficient, magnetoresistance and thermopower of disordered metals and alloys. The author begins by showing how conventional Boltzmann theory can be extended and modified when the mean free path of the conduction electrons becomes comparable with their wavelength and interionic separation. The consequence of this is explored and the theory tested by application to experimental data on metallic glasses. Designed as a self-contained review, the book will appeal to non-specialist physicists, metallurgists and chemists with an interest in disordered metals.

1. Introduction
2. Production and structure of metallic glasses
3. Electron transport in metals: introduction to conventional theory
4. Scattering
5. Simple liquid metals: Ziman theory
6. Phonons in disordered systems
7. Interactions and quasi-particles
8. Transition metals and alloys
9. The Hall coefficient of metallic glasses
10. Magnetoresistance
11. Electrical conductivity of metallic glasses: weak localisation
12. Interaction effect or Coulomb anomaly: density of states
13. The effect of the enhanced interaction effect on conductivity
14. The effect of a magnetic field on the enhanced interaction effect
15. The thermopower of disordered metals and alloys
16. Comparison of theory and experiment
Appendices.

Subject Areas: Materials science [TGM], Metals technology / metallurgy [TDM]