Reduction of the Lorenz Number in Copper at Room Temperature due to Strong Inelastic Electron Scattering Brought about by High-Density Dislocations

In this work, heat and charge transport were measured in a series of deformed bulk Cu samples where dislocation density was tuned but dislocation character generally remained unchanged. We observed a notable violation of the Wiedemann–Franz law at room temperature for such a conventional metal. We s...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The journal of physical chemistry letters 2019-02, Vol.10 (3), p.507-512
Main Authors: Liang, Xin, Dai, Feihu
Format: Article
Language:English
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In this work, heat and charge transport were measured in a series of deformed bulk Cu samples where dislocation density was tuned but dislocation character generally remained unchanged. We observed a notable violation of the Wiedemann–Franz law at room temperature for such a conventional metal. We show that high-density dislocations introduce strong inelastic electron scattering, which relax heat and charge currents to different extents. A reduction of Lorenz number by 15% was observed. We reveal that the contribution from elastic scattering to the incremental thermal resistivity scarcely varies with dislocation density, but the contribution due to inelastic scattering monotonically increases and becomes overwhelmingly dominant for dislocation density above 1.0 × 1015 m–2.
ISSN:1948-7185
1948-7185
DOI:10.1021/acs.jpclett.8b03544