Electron grain boundary scattering and the resistivity of nanometric metallic structures

Resistivity and Hall voltage in gold thin films deposited on mica at room temperature

“…These values are in good agreement with magnetoresistance of 0.1% and 0.3% measured for the film 47 and 97 nm thick, and show how difficult it is to determine this coefficient in thinner films, where the changes are less than 0.1%. Similar transverse magnetoresistance have been reported in other gold samples: nanoporous thin films [20] and 50 nm thick film composed by nanometric grains [5]. Both reports present values for the resistivity at 4 K which are similar to those found in our samples.…”

“…They found that the temperature dependence of the resistivity exhibits an increase of its slope respect to that of the bulk. On the other hand, when the dominant mechanism is electron grain boundary scattering this increase is not observed, and also, the mean free path at 4 K correspond to mean grain diameter [5].…”

“…The last two symbols represent the thickness and the bulk mean free path, respectively. The final expression used for calculating the resistivity was published elsewhere [4,5] …”

Resistivity of thiol-modified gold thin films

“…At room temperature, these mechanisms are: electron-phonons scattering, electron-grain boundary scattering and electron-surface scattering. One way to verify the influence of each one separately is to try to isolate or reduce the effect of the others, for example by changing the surface morphology or grain sizes in a thin film [11][12][13][14]. Since thiols will mainly affect the electron-surface scattering process [11], we need to diminish the electron-grain boundary scattering (electron-phonon scattering is already determined by the temperature).…”

Electron transport properties of sub-3-nm diameter copper nanowires

“…For example, Henriquez et al [8,9] have reported electron scattering to vary with grain size in the case of gold thin films. Grain boundary scattering is found to dominate for grain sizes much smaller than the electron mean-free path, while for much larger grain sizes it is the surface that is critical to resistivity.…”