Recovery and recrystallization processes of pure silver and its alloys containing about 0.1 at % of cadmium, tin or antimony deformed 40∼90% by rolling at-196∼60°C were examined by micro-Vickers hardness and electrical resistivity measurements.
The recrystallization temperature of these alloys decreased with increasing area reduction and with lowering deformation temperature. The solute elements which have large binding energy with atomic vacancies raised the recrystallization temperature of silver, because they trap atomic vacancies and inhibit their migration.
When the kind and the quantity of the solute elements were fixed, ΔρE/ΔρW was shown to be almostly constant independent of the degree and the temperature of deformation, where ΔρW and ΔρE are the increment of specific resistivity by the plastic deformation and the decrement of it by the recovery process, respectively. For a definite deformation condition, the recrystallization temperature of the alloy increased with increasing ΔρE/ΔρW.
