Scattering of conduction electrons from vacancies in gold

Abstract

Dingle temperatures for the scattering of conduction electrons at vacancies quenched into gold have been measured for 10 cyclotron orbits. The effect of dislocations produced during the quench has been separated from the contribution of the vacancies. Local values of the scattering rates are calculated from the data. The anisotropy of the scattering turns out to be very small. Vacancies in Au are characterized by a strong relaxation of the surrounding lattice. Calculations of Dingle temperatures for a vacancy model without lattice relaxation give a neck Dingle temperature which is only 50% of those for the belly orbits, whereas the measured value is smaller only by 10%. This discrepancy is due to the lattice distortion which increases preferentially the neck scattering and is therefore responsible for the weak anisotropy of the measured data. The scattering theories available at present time are not applicable to vacancies in Au. They must be extended to include the lattice distortion.