Low temperature recovery of plastically deformed cadmium, indium, tin, and lead

Abstract

The recovery of the electrical resistivity increment produced by tensile plastic deformation of Cd, In, and Pb, and by compressive plastic deformation of In and Sn has been investigated. The isochronal recovery of Cd has many similarities to the recovery after thermal neutron irradiation, with recovery stages at 4 to 10 °K, 10 to 20 °K, and 60 to 75 °K. Recovery stages were observed for Pb at 9, 70, 160, and 280 °K. The 70 °K stage is attributed to migration of intrinsic defects, perhaps self‐interstitials, the 160 °K stage tentatively to migration of vacancies and the 280 °K stage to recrystallization. For Sn, the superconducting transition temperature Tc was increased 0.11 °K by a compressive deformation at 4.2 °K which produced a resistivity increment Δϱ0 = 8.6 × 10−8 Ω cm. Since the recovery of ΔTc was almost complete at 120 °K, while the recovery of Δϱ was less than 50%, it is concluded that point defects caused the change in Tc for Sn.