Correlation between weak localization effects and resistivity saturation in dilute Ti-Al alloys

Resistivity saturation in Ti-Al alloys has been studied by fitting empirical functions of temperature, T, to 20 sets of literature data. By replacing the commonly used temperature-independent saturation term by a term in T−1/2, to model weak localization effects at high temperature, the quality of the fits improved significantly and physically acceptable values were obtained for the fitted parameters. A linear correlation was found between the fitted high-T weak localization parameters and experimental data for the corresponding low-T weak localization conduction terms. No such correlation could be detected when using constant saturation terms. The results suggest that weak localization is a possible cause for resistivity saturation in Ti-Al alloys.