Modeling the electrical resistivity of deformation processed metal-metal composites

Deformation processed metal-metal (matrix-reinforcement) composites (DMMCs) are high-strength, high-conductivity in situ composites produced by severe plastic deformation. The electrical resistivity of DMMCs is rarely investigated mechanistically and tends to be slightly higher than the rule-of-mixtures prediction. In this paper, we analyze several possible physical mechanisms (i.e. phonons, interfaces, mutual solution, grain boundaries, dislocations) responsible for the electrical resistivity of DMMC systems and how these mechanisms could be affected by processing conditions (i.e. temperature, deformation processing). As an innovation, we identified and assembled the major scattering mechanisms for specific DMMC systems and modeled their electrical resistivity in combination. From this analysis, it appears that filament coarsening rather than dislocation annihilation is primarily responsible for the resistivity drop observed in these materials after annealing and that grain boundary scattering contributes to the resistivity at least at the same magnitude as does interface scattering. (C) 2014 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.