The thermopower of metallic glasses

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Abstract
The authors present experimental results for the thermopowers of a number of amorphous transition-metal alloys in the temperature range 2-300K. They show that the observed temperature dependences arise from the temperature-dependent electron-phonon enhancement factor lambda (T). The form of lambda (T) obtained implies that the electron-phonon coupling factor, alpha 2, does not vary as omega -1 as is the case for amorphous simple metals but in fact increases as omega increases. The magnitudes of the observed enhancements are generally in good agreement with those obtained from superconductivity data and the inclusion of spin-fluctuation and electron-electron interaction effects does not alter this agreement. They do, however, find significant disagreements for a number of alloys, which may be an indication of further renormalisation contributions. They also briefly discuss the observed signs of the thermopowers, considering the predictions of the Mott s-d scattering model and the possibility of significant d-band conductivity.