A theory which described the scattering of Bloch electrons, by an atom which was half-way along its path towards a neighboring vacancy, was put into a computationally convenient form. This permitted calculations to be made of the electromigration wind force at the saddle-point position in an elementary diffusion step; where the cross-section for Bloch electron-impurity scattering of the migrating ion was greatest. Results were presented for atoms which migrated into a neighboring vacancy in Al or Cu. The results were found to be consistent with experimental data; even though only a 2-atom cluster was embedded in the host metal. It was concluded that even more realistic calculations of the electromigration wind force on substitutional impurities in metals would be possible upon incorporating the effects of local lattice deformation and charge transfer.

J.Van Ek, J.P.Dekker, A.Lodder: Physical Review B, 1995, 52[12], 8794-800