Abstract
The behavior of vacancies was investigated in the ternary Au25Ag25Pd50 alloy with the help of electrical resistivity measurements during various isothermal-annealing experiments. The relaxation times of vacancies and short-range order (SRO) formation under the influence of thermal and quenched-in vacancies were determined. It was found out that the life times of vacancies were comparable to the relaxation times of SRO formation. The results show that vacancy annihilation follows first order kinetics. Further, the activation enthalpies for vacancy annihilation, formation, migration and self-diffusion were determined from the relaxation times. The values of the determined parameters were found to be self-consistent and agreed quite well with the values predicted by the theory.