Free Electron Characteristic Peculiarities Caused by Lattice Vibrations in Metals

Abstract

It is shown that the traditional explanation of the free electron properties, such as mean free electron path, drift mobility, and the relaxation time, by lattice vibrations, is not valid for real free randomly moving (RM) electrons in materials with degenerate electron gas. It is shown that the effective density of the free RM electrons in elemental metals is completely determined by density-of-states at the Fermi surface and by absolute temperature. The study has shown that the lattice vibrations excite not only the free RM electrons but also produce the same number of weakly screened ions (so-named electronic defects), which cause the scattering of the free RM electrons and related electron kinetic characteristics.