The thermal conductivities of single crystals of lead, niobium and a lead-bismuth alloy have been measured between 1 and 4°K in the superconducting state. At temperatures near 1 °K the conduction is mostly by lattice waves and the effect of plastic deformation on this conduction mechanism has been investigated. This has shown that deformation greatly reduces the magnitude of the conductivity and that its temperature dependance changes from
T
3
to values nearer
T
2
for niobium and the lead alloy but remains unchanged for pure lead. It is suggested that these changes in conductivity are due to the scattering of lattice waves by isolated dislocations, and an attempt has been made to correlate the densities of dislocations obtained from thermal conductivity measurements with those obtained from a knowledge of the amount by which the specimen was deformed.
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