Please consider attending the following: MATERIALS ENGINEERING SEMINAR "The Mechanisms of Solute Effects on the Electrical Resistivity of Metal Alloys" By Mohammed Naziru Issahaq Purdue MSE Ph.D. Preliminary Exam Advisor: Professor Kevin P. Trumble ABSTRACT Metallic electrical conductors usually lose their conductivity during material strengthening. Typical strengthening mechanisms for these metal conductors are grain size reduction, plastic deformation and solid solution strengthening. Among these mechanisms, the effect of impurity elements, in and out of solid solution is by far, the most potent mechanism for degrading electrical conductivity. The solute effect on conductivity however, varies with different solute atoms in solid solution. To determine how the electrical resistivity varies with increasing concentration of different solute atoms in a solvent, many theoretical models have been developed and tested against experimental data. It is found that, the resistivity does not exactly scale with the amount of lattice distortion due to atomic size differences between the solvent and solute atoms, but the interplay of several other factors including the distribution of the solute atoms in solution and the valence difference between the solvent and solute atoms. The direction of this review therefore, is to recap on the mechanisms that were thought to be the controlling factors of the solute effects on resistivity and what has now been found to constitute the working theory for the prediction of the impact of solute elements on the electrical resistivity of metals. Date: Tuesday, January 30, 2018 Time: 8:30 A.M. Place: ARMS 1021