Influence of lead concentration on Debye temperature in palladium alloys and microstructure

[Display omitted] •The article is about palladium-based membrane alloys with promising characteristics.•The influence of the alloying element, lead, on the Debye temperature in palladium-based alloys is investigated.•The findings show that alloying elements can be used to produce materials with a specified subsystem of defects. This article is about palladium-based membrane alloys with promising characteristics. Lead concentration in samples is 5 and 20 wt%. The samples are prepared from high purity metals (99.95 wt%). The samples are characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) techniques. Effect of the concentration of alloying components on the Debye temperature and on the mean-square displacements of atoms is determined. Influence of defects of the first class (point defect – vacancy pairs, pores, dislocation loops of small radius) found to be dominant in alloys.