Electrical resistivity and absolute thermoelectric power of liquid indium-nickel-manganese ternary alloys

Abstract

The electrical resistivity and the absolute thermopower of In-Ni-Mn liquid ternary alloys have been measured as functions of temperature and of concentration. The transition metal composition was held constant and, starting from the indium-nickel eutectic, we substituted manganese for nickel up to 50 atomic per cent manganese ( with x up to 0.5). The experimental transport properties for the ternary alloys are completely different from what could be expected from an interpolation between the resistivities of the two binary systems In-Ni and In-Mn that we measured earlier. Therefore this system is particularly suitable for testing the extended Faber-Ziman theory. Experimentally it is found that the resistivity decreases and that the thermopower increases strongly as functions of the manganese composition in the ternary system. These data are discussed and interpreted qualitatively, taking into account the electronic structure of the ternary alloy.