We discuss recent progress regarding size effects and their incidence upon the coefficients describing charge transport (resistivity, magnetoresistance, and Hall effect) induced by electron scattering from disordered grain boundaries and from rough surfaces on metallic nanostructures; we review recent measurements of the magneto transport coefficients that elucidate the electron scattering mechanisms at work. We review as well theoretical developments regarding quantum transport theories that allow calculating the increase in resistivity induced by electron-rough surface scattering (in the absence of grain boundaries) from first principles—from the parameters that describe the surface roughness that can be measured with a Scanning Tunnelling Microscope (STM). We evaluate the predicting power of the quantum version of the Fuchs-Sondheimer theory and of the model proposed by Calecki, abandoning the method of parameter fitting used for decades, but comparing instead theoretical predictions with resistivity measured in thin films where surface roughness has also been measured with a STM, and where electron-grain boundary scattering can be neglected. We also review the theory of Mayadas and Shatzkes (MS) [Phys. Rev. B 1, 1382 (1970)] used for decades, and discuss its severe conceptual difficulties that arise out of the fact that: (i) MS employed plane waves to describe the electronic states within the metal sample having periodic grain boundaries, rather than the Bloch states known since the thirties to be the solutions of the Schrödinger equation describing electrons propagating through a Krönig-Penney [Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. A 130, 499 (1931)] periodic potential; (ii) MS ignored the fact that the wave functions describing electrons propagating through a 1-D disordered potential are expected to decay exponentially with increasing distance, a fact known since the work of Anderson [Phys. Rev. 109, 1492 (1958)] in 1958 for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1977; (iii) The current in the sample should be proportional to TN, the probability that an electron traverses N consecutive (disordered) grains found along a mean free path; MS assumed that TN = 1. We review unpublished details of a quantum transport theory based upon a model of diffusive transport and Kubo's linear response formalism recently published [Arenas et al., Appl. Surf. Sci. 329, 184 (2015)], which permits estimating the increase in resistivity of a metallic specimen (over the bulk resistivity) under the combined effects of electron scattering by phonons, impurities, disordered grain boundaries, and rough surfaces limiting the sample. We evaluate the predicting power of both the MS theory and of the new quantum model on samples where the temperature dependence of the resistivity has been measured between 4 K and 300 K, and where surface roughness and grain size distribution has been measured on each sample via independent experiments. We find that the quantum theory does exhibit a predicting power, whereas the predicting power of the MS model as well as the significance and reliability of its fitting parameters seems questionable. We explore the power of the new theory by comparing, for the first time, the resistivity predicted and measured on nanometric Cu wires of (approximately) rectangular cross section employed in building integrated circuits, based upon a quantum description of electron motion.

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We report an extension of the theory of Sheng, Xing and Wang (SXW) (Sheng L, Xing D Y and Wang Z D 1995 Phys. Rev. B 51 7325), which permits the calculation of size effects from the statistical properties that characterize the surface on a microscopic scale, for samples in which the average height-height autocorrelation function (ACF) is described either by a Gaussian or by an exponential. We also report measurements of the topography of a gold film deposited on a mica substrate using a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) on a gold sample 70 nm thick deposited under ultrahigh vacuum on a mica substrate preheated to 300 °C. From the STM images we compute the average ACF which characterizes the surface of the film on the scale of 10 nm × 10 nm, and determine by least-squares fitting the r.m.s. amplitude and the lateral correlation length corresponding to a Gaussian and to an exponential that best represent the ACF data. Using the modified SXW (mSXW) theory and a Gaussian and an exponential representation of the ACF data, we calculate the quantum reflectivity R characterizing the interaction between the electrons and the surface, and the decrease in conductivity attributable to electron-surface scattering, for mean free paths 2.5 nm 1000 nm. We compare the predictions of the classical Fuchs-Sondheimer (FS) model for the average quantum reflectivity R = R, calculated with the mSXW model, with the predictions of the quantum theory, using both the Gaussian and the exponential representation of the ACF. We find that predicted by FS theory for R = R exceeds that predicted by the quantum mSXW theory, by an amount that increases with increasing . This discrepancy can be traced to the angular dependence of the quantum reflectivity R[cos()]. We also find that the decrease in conductivity predicted by mSXW theory for a Gaussian representation of the data is larger than that predicted for an exponential representation of the same ACF data. We attribute this to the fact that the reflectivity R is determined by the Fourier transform of the ACF, and the Gaussian and the exponential that best represent the ACF data exhibit Fourier transforms that are similar in the regions where k~1, but are different in the regions where k<1 and k>1 (k: wave vector).

We report measurements of the temperature dependent resistivity ρ(T ) of a gold film 70 nm thick deposited on mica preheated to 300 • C in UHV, performed between 4 K and 300 K, and measurements of the surface topography of the same film performed with a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM). From the roughness measured with the STM we determine the parameters δ (r.m.s. amplitude) and ξ (lateral correlation length) corresponding to a Gaussian and to an exponential representation of the average autocorrelation function (ACF). We use the parameters δ and ξ determined via STM measurements to calculate the quantum reflectivity R, and the temperature dependence of both the bulk resistivity ρ 0 (T ) and of the increase in resistivity ρ(T ) = ρ(T ) − ρ 0 (T ) induced by electron-surface scattering on this film, according to a modified version of the theory of Sheng, Xing and Wang recently proposed (Munoz et al 1999 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 11 L299). The resistivity ρ 0 in the absence of surface scattering predicted for a Gaussian representation of the ACF is systematically smaller than that predicted for an exponential representation of the ACF at all temperatures. The increase in resistivity ρ induced by electron-surface scattering predicted for a Gaussian representation of the average ACF data is about 25% larger than the increase in resistivity predicted for an exponential representation of the ACF data.

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