Conduction-electron scattering in quenched and annealed gold

Abstract
The anisotropy of the conduction-electron scattering due to vacancies and stacking-fault tetrahedra (SFT) in quenched and subsequently annealed gold single crystals has been studied by measuring the de Haas-van Alphen (dHvA) Dingle (scattering) temperatures TD for a large number of cyclotron orbits. The samples were quenched from 900°C into ice water, and were later annealed at 23 and 40°C. We find that the dHvA scattering rates 1τdHvA due to both vacancies and SFT are much larger than those obtained from resistivity measurements 1τρ. The ratio of the [111] neck to belly orbital scattering rate rises from 1.0 for vacancies to 3.5 for SFT. This is attributed to the stronger and longer range strain field associated with the larger defects. We have calculated the local lifetimes τ(k) from the measured TD and found a large scattering anisotropy with the strongest scattering arising from the [100] region.