Quenching Effects and Vacancy Characteristics in Zinc

Zinc single crystals and polycrystalline strips containing less than 10 ppm metallic impurities have been quenched from temperatures ranging between 20 and 240 °C to 4.2 K. Resistivity changes upon annealing were studied in the temperature range 70 to 450 K. The recovery spectrum is complicated by a cold work effect which is induced by the quenching and by the thermal cycling and superimposes on the elimination of the supersaturation concentration of vacancies. It was possible, however, to isolate the stage for the migration of single vacancies (around 180 K) and to measure the corresponding activation energy, (0.44 ± 0.03) eV. It is shown that, at low temperature, their migration proceeds essentially by nonbasal jumps. Furthermore, the vacancy formation energy has been determined to be (0.45 ± 0.05) eV.