Electrical resistivity point defects studied

A frequently used technique to study point-defect creation is electrical conductivity measurement, because of its simplicity and great sensitivity. Indeed, in metallic materials, point defects are scattering centers for electrons they increase the electrical resistivity. In semiconductors, they introduce localized levels in the... 

Recovery of point defects created at low temperature occurs by several intermediate stages, generally involving clusters, and has been studied by various techniques electrical resistivity, differential scanning calorimetry, transmission electron microscopy (when the size of defect clusters is larger than 2 nm), positron annihilation (the lifetime of a positron in a three-dimensional vacancy cluster increases with the size of the cluster and can reach 500 ps), and Huang X-ray scattering (it increases when interstitials cluster into dislocation loops). 

In intermetallic compounds, the production of point defects by electron irradiation has generally been studied by electrical resistivity measurements. This has the advantage that the specific resistivity of a Frenkel pair is one to two orders of magnitude larger than that of an antisite defect. 

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