WB materials? ? ?

[Keyser Soze]

Silver is good.

A link to a project. Click!

[jaydee]

Originally Posted by Kobuchi

An alloy, like a slice of bread, isn't just the sum of its ingredients: bread makes terrible pasta.

Pure copper added to pure silver... :shrug: I don't see any logical explaination that could make this combination provide a higher thermal conductivity than pure silver.

[Kobuchi]

Neither do I. But aren't you baffled that a few grams of sugar in a kilo of dough will make bread tough and full of holes, or that a miniscule addition of carbon to iron yields steel? Compare the thermal conductivity of a solid block of concrete to that of gravel, sand, or cement. The lattice structure is the thing.

Maybe there's a thermally ideal lattice arrangement for copper we can get by by adding some impurity. Maybe.

[jaydee]

Originally Posted by Kobuchi

Neither do I. But aren't you baffled that a few grams of sugar in a kilo of dough will make bread tough and full of holes, or that a miniscule addition of carbon to iron yields steel? Compare the thermal conductivity of a solid block of concrete to that of gravel, sand, or cement. The lattice structure is the thing.

Maybe there's a thermally ideal lattice arrangement for copper we can get by by adding some impurity. Maybe.

Look up the reasons why sugar with do that.

We are talking about 2 ingredients not a combination of many. The properties of each are known as is the process on how they are combined and we now know the outcome. We can break down what benifit/disadvantage the 28% copper added in thermal conductivity in the process they use to make the stuff.

Silver is 418
Copper is 388
CuSil is 371

Adding copper to silver actually had a negative effect. Figure that one out....

[Brians256]

Well, I know that addition of trace impurities can greatly affect the electrical performance of a material, so it is possible. Adding some trace elements can improve electron mobility over either material by changing the lattice structure and other such things (see strained silicon as a practical example).