Sulphur diffusion in silver and copper single crystals

Abstract

Sulphur diffusion in copper and silver single crystals has been studied between 0.65T M and the melting point, using a radioactive technique. A comparison is made between self- and sulphur-diffusion and leads to the following conclusions: in the low temperature range (T < 0.8T M) the effect of dislocations is more important for sulphur diffusion than for self diffusion, which is in agreement with sulphur segregation near the linear defects; at higher temperatures, a departure from the Arrhenius law is observed for self diffusion in silver, and for sulphur diffusion in silver, which can be explained by complex defects such as divacancies; as sulphur forms substitutional solid solutions with copper and with silver, the differences between the Ag-S and Cu-S systems can be explained by a size effect.