The Hall effect and the electrical resistivity in amorphous Ni-B-Si alloys

Abstract

The values for the normal Hall coefficient, R0, electrical resistivity, rho , and the room-temperature coefficient of resistivity, alpha , for ten amorphous Ni-B-Si alloys, with metalloid concentration ranging from 20 to 39 at.% are reported. R0 and alpha continuously decrease with increasing metalloid content, or for the fixed metalloid content, with increasing silicon concentration; and alpha changes sign for rho >or=140 mu Omega cm. The value of the Fermi wavevector deduced from R0 (within the framework of the free-electron model) and its dependence on the composition of the alloy indicate that the transport properties of our alloys can be interpreted in terms of the Ziman-Faber theory. An alternative description of the variation of R0 is also discussed.