LXXXI. Annealing of point defects in metals and alloys

Abstract

An analysis is made of published data on the recovery of resistivity during the annealing of metals at low temperatures, after damage by irradiation, quenching, or cold work. Interpreted in terms of the migration and annihilation of point defects, the experimental observations show two annealing stages, in the second of which the number of migratory jumps made by a defect before annihilation appears anomalously small. It is suggested that during the first stage some of the defects become trapped (e.g. on impurity atoms), and that the second stage is concerned with the evaporation of these defects from their traps ; this leads to a reasonable number of jumps for the second stage. The theory is applied to some results of quenching experiments by Roswell and Nowick. Finally, it is pointed out that the unexpectedly large number of jumps observed in stage 1 annealing, after irradiation or cold work, can be accounted for if the interstitial mechanism provides a random walk in only one dimension, as in the case of ‘crowdions’.