Thermopower and resistivity in amorphous Mg/sub 1-x/Zn/sub x/ alloys

Abstract

Thermopower and resistivity have been measured on a series of Mg1-xZnx amorphous alloys (0.2<X<0.35) over the temperature range 4-300 K. The thermopower data cannot be explained on the basis of the simple Ziman model. Using a two-component model, which can be considered as an extreme simplification of the Faber-Ziman theory of liquid-metal alloys, we were able to fit the experimental data over the entire range of compositions. The success of this model strongly implies that the usual simplification of average properties involved in the simple Ziman model is inappropriate to amorphous metal alloys.