Electrical and thermal conductivity in Mg–5Sn Alloy at different aging status

•Electrical conductivity and thermal conductivity of aged Mg–5Sn alloys were investigated.•The thermal conductivity increases with the increasing aging time.•The influence of the lattice distortion on thermal conductivity is greater than the precipitates.•The interface structure of precipitates and α-Mg matrix has an obvious influence on thermal conductivity.

The electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity and its relationship with the microstructure in Mg–5Sn alloy aged at 513 K for different aging times were investigated systematically in this paper. The results show that the electrical conductivity and thermal conductivity obviously increase with the increasing aging time, and its values increase from 10.25 × 106 S·m− 1 to 13.7 × 106 S·m− 1, 87.5 W·m− 1·K− 1 to 122 W·m− 1·K− 1 after aging treatment for 120 h, respectively. Meanwhile, it is found that there exist quite different relationships between unit cell volume and thermal conductivity in early and later aging stages.

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