Abstract
In Chap. 9, the basic aspects of the phenomenon of electrical conductivity in metals were introduced and explained. The finite resistance of these materials originates from the fact that a real crystal always exhibits deviations from perfect lattice periodicity: phonons and defects. An infinitely high electrical conductivity is unthinkable in this description, because (1) a crystal without a certain degree of disorder is inconceivable according to the second law of thermodynamics, and (2) even in the absence of phonon and defect scattering, electron-electron scattering will still cause resistance (Sect. 9.3). However, in the year 1911, Onnes [10.1] discovered that the electrical resistance of mercury approaches an unmeasurably small value when it is cooled below 4.2 K.
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© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Ibach, H., Lüth, H. (2009). Superconductivity. In: Solid-State Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-93804-0_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-93804-0_10
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