A comparison between microsectioning studies of low-temperature self-diffusion in silver

A comparison is made between various microsectioning techniques for radiotracer studies of self-diffusion in silver. Previous investigations by various groups were made with the help of chemical and electrochemical microsectioning techniques. In the present work ion-beam sputtering is applied to the sectioning of silver. Over the temperature range investigated (580 to 834 K) the self-diffusion coefficients (2 × 10−17 to 9 × 10−13 cm2 s−1) fit the Arrhenius equation D = 0.043 exp (–1.76 eV/kT) cm2 s−1. A comparison between our results and those of previous measurements indicates that the diffusion coefficients of the more recent electrochemical and chemical microsectioning investigations are fully compatible. On the other hand, the pioneering work on chemical and electrochemical microsectioning studies of silver self-diffusion is probably in error, due to unsuspected difficulties of the sectioning techniques.