This book provides the fundamental statistical theory of atomic transport in crystalline solids, that is the means by which processes occurring at the atomic level are related to macroscopic transport coefficients and other observable quantities. The cornerstones of the authors' treatment are (i) the physical concepts of lattice defects, (ii) the phenomenological description provided by non-equilibrium thermodynamics and (iii) the various methods of statistical mechanics used to link these (kinetic theory, random-walk theory, linear response theory etc.). The book is primarily concerned with transport in the body of crystal lattices and not with transport on surfaces, within grain boundaries or along dislocations, although much of the theory here presented can be applied to these low-dimensional structures when they are atomically well ordered and regular.

‘ … a thorough and critical treatise centered on the thermodynamics and kinetics of atomic transport in ionic and metallic solids, a field in which both authors have been leading contributors for many years … authoritative … should prove very valuable to scientists and advanced students in all the areas of materials science.’

David Turnbull Source: Science

‘The authors demonstrate in a remarkable way that a high theoretical level of presentation and comprehensibility for a broad readership are not mutally exclusive … strongly recommended to final year undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as to research workers … a pleasure to read and will be of substantial benefit to anyone interested in diffusion from a general point of view.’

Source: Zeitschrift fur physikalische Chemie