Hall Effect in Liquid Metals: Experimental Results

Abstract

The development of quantum mechanics at the beginning of this century gave rise to a well-established and fundamental understanding of crystalline solids. One of the basic facts that simplified the theoretical problem was the fundamental property of the crystal lattice, namely its periodicity. This allowed one of calculate approximate yet realistic solutions of the Schrödinger equation. The theory of non-periodic structures is much more difficult and detailed calculations have not yet been performed on a large scale. Since it was not clear to what extent the periodicity itself was directly responsible for the physical properties of crystals, direct experimental studies of non-periodic structures became of the utmost importance. An intense interest in such studies on metallic materials started about 20 years ago. For several reasons liquid metals proved to be excellent materials for such investigations. Above the normal melting temperature liquid metals are in stable thermodynamic equilibrium. They have well-defined atomic structures and can be studied in the form of alloys as well as pure liquid elements. As most liquid metals are completely miscible their alloys can be studied over the entire concentration range. Because of phase diagram restrictions this is not possible for most crystalline alloy systems. Furthermore samples of any desired quantity can easily be prepared.