The motion of liquid alloy zones along a bar under the influence of an electric current

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Abstract
A critical examination is made of the interpretation of experiments reported by Pfann et al. (1957) in which molten alloy zones were observed to move along the surface of a germanium bar through which a current was passed. It is shown that the influence of the Peltier effect along cannot account for all of their experimental results and an alternative interpretation is proposed in which the motion is ascribed to a combination of the Peltier effect and ionic migration in the molten alloy. A theory is presented which yields an expression for the steady velocity of a thin zone under the influence of a temperature gradient, Peltier, Thomson and ionic migration effects. Certain special cases are considered and a new method of measuring differential ionic mobility is proposed.