Grain-Boundary Resistance in Polycrystalline Metals

Abstract

Grain boundaries are known to reduce significantly the electrical dc conductivity of polycrystalline metallic materials. In this paper, we give a quantum mechanical calculation of the grain-boundary resistance based on the transfer-matrix approach. The results show an exponential decrease of the conductivity with respect to the number of grain boundaries per mean free path in accord with an empirical model proposed recently.