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Old 25th Sep 2005, 5:54 pm   #15
mikelect
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Location: Wrexham, North Wales, UK.
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Default Re: Whiskers in germanium transistors etc

Quote:
Originally Posted by GMB
It's dislocations in the crystal structure that prevents a material freely flowing and bending about. When in this pristine state the atoms can slip over each other so easily that you get this strange behaviour - and you can more readily appreciate how a fine whisker could be jacked out from a metal surface if some small cyclic force is applied to it.
This doesn't explain the same phenomena happening to gold which is an entirely different ductile metal

Mike
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