Measurements of Transport Phenomena of Dilute Impurities in Metals

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Abstract
Transport phenomena in solid metals under the influence of external forces such as electric fields or temperature gradients have been determined mostly by means of marker or sectioning techniques so far. Sectioning techniques permit simultaneous measurements of transport shifts and transport rate-controlling diffusion and are therefore preferred for the more precise measurements. For brittle or soft materials sectioning is not feasible. It is shown that use of an electron microprobe for transport profile analysis avoids these difficulties and improves the accuracy of impurity transport measurements remarkably. This is due to the much better linear resolution and the nondestructive analysis without any deformation of the sample. For dilute impurities the results are virtually free of analytical errors. A review of measurements and techniques, particularly steady-state profile determinations, is given.