Structural relaxation and chemical decomposition in amorphous TM-M alloys

Small angle X-ray scattering experiments performed on amorphous two-component transition metal-metalloid alloys have shown that these materials decompose on annealing clearly before crystallization starts. This process influences the behaviour of physical properties in a similar way as structural relaxation does. To separate the two effects mainly composition dependent properties must be compared with others which are mainly sensitive to structural changes. In this paper it is shown that the ratio of the annealing-induced changes of the temperature coefficient of the resistivity and of the residual resistivity is determined by the underlying elementary process. The two values resulting for predominating structural relaxation and for predominating decomposition seem to be universal and are compatible with a theory of phonon-controlled conductivity in high-resistance conductors.