Electrical transport in nanostructured Ni3Al at low temperatures

Abstract The electrical resistivity in nanostructured Ni 3 Al has been discriminated to be dominated fully by the electron-magnon scattering with spin fluctuations and evolve in the form of T 5 / 3 and T 3 / 2 below and above its Curie temperature. In addition to doping into γ ′-Ni 3 Al nanophases, excessive Ni atoms are demonstrated to aggregate at the cores of Ni 3 Al so that some γ -Ni nanophases are embedded in the γ ′-Ni 3 Al ones for forming the core/shell nanostructure. The itinerant electrons from γ ′-Ni 3 Al nanophases is further suggested to wander around the phonons in both γ -Ni and γ ′-Ni 3 Al nanophases for screening the electron-phonon interactions. Consequently, the conduction electrons are scattered largely by spin fluctuations in γ ′-Ni 3 Al shells to suppress the contribution of phonons to the electron transport in nanostructured Ni 3 Al.