Temperature Dependence of Transport Coefficients in Liquid and Amorphous Metals

TL;DR

This study uses the muffin-tin effective medium approximation to analyze how temperature affects resistivity and thermopower in amorphous and liquid metals, revealing a pseudo-gap caused by strong scattering.

Contribution

It demonstrates the temperature dependence of transport coefficients in amorphous and liquid metals using a specific theoretical approach, linking resistivity behavior to a pseudo-gap.

Findings

Large resistivity correlates with negative temperature coefficient.

Pseudo-gap opens in the spectrum due to strong scattering.

Thermopower exhibits complex density and temperature dependence.

Abstract

We apply the muffin-tin effective medium approximation to calculate the temperature dependence of the resistivity and of the thermopower of amorphous and liquid metals. The results show unambiguously that a large resistivity is accompanied by a negative temperature coefficient, in agreement with the experimental situation. This behavior is shown to result from a pseudo-gap which opens in the 1-particle spectrum due to strong scattering at the quasi zone boundary. In turn the thermopower is found to have non-trivial density and temperature dependences.