Determination of the vacancy formation enthalpy for high purity Ni

Positron-annihilation lifetime measurements have been made on Ni over a temperature range of 4.2 to 1700 K. We find a small change in the lifetime from 4.2 to 900 K indicating a very small thermal-expansion effect. A small precursor effect is observed before the onset of significant vacancy trapping. A monovacancy formation enthalpy of 1.54/sub +0.2//sup -0.1/ eV is extracted without taking divacancies into consideration in the analysis. No detrapping from mono-vacancies is observed even at the higher temperatures. The vacancy formation enthalpy extracted from the lifetime data is compared to values obtained by Doppler-broadening and angular-correlation techniques