Electromigration in tin single crystals

Atom transport in high-purity tin single crystals due to the influence of large direct currents has been measured by the “vacancy flux” technique. Cylindrical specimens were selected with c-axis oriented with 9° perpendicular or parallel to the direction of current flow. Rates of both longitudinal and transverse dimensional changes were used to calculate the anode-directed atom drift velocity. The results gave $\text{Z}{}^1{}_6\text{?}{}_6\text{= ?18±2}$ and $\text{z}{}^1{}_{\mathrm{\perp }}\text{?}{}_{\mathrm{\perp }}\text{= ?18 ±2}$, where Z¹ is the effective charge number and ?₆ = 0.89 and ?_⊥ = 0.54 are the estimated correlation factors in the parallel and perpendicular directions. These values for Z¹ are appreciably smaller than the results reported earlier for polycrystalline tin by Kuz'memko. The activation energies for $\text{Z}{}^1\text{?}$ agree within experimental error with those of self-diffusion.