Electronic Transport in Metal Nanocrystal Arrays: The Effect of Structural Disorder on Scaling Behavior

2001/02/24 by R. Parthasarathy, Raghuveer Parthasarathy, Xiao-Min Lin +2 · 6 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.mes-hall

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.87.186807

4 pages, 3 figures. Figure 1 is best viewed in the PostScript version.

arxiv created 2001/02/24 · openalex publication_date 2001/10/16 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We investigate the impact of structural disorder on electronic transport in gold nanocrystal monolayers. Arrays ranging from void-filled networks to well-ordered superlattices show clear voltage thresholds (V_T) due to Coulomb blockade, and temperature-independent conduction indicative of quantum tunneling. Current-voltage characteristics of arrays with and without long-range structural order were found to collapse onto distinct scaling curves. The former follow a single power law: I\ensuremath∼(V\ensuremath-V_T)^\ensuremathζ, \ensuremathζ\phantom\rule0ex0ex=\phantom\rule0ex0ex2.25\ifmmode±\else\textpm\fi0.1. The latter show additional structure, reflecting the underlying disordered topology.

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• Raghuveer Parthasarathy [wikipedia]