Infinite charge mobility in muscovite at 300K

Abstract

Evidence is presented for infinite charge mobility in natural crystals of muscovite mica at room temperature. Muscovite has a basic layered structure containing a flat monatomic sheet of potassium sandwiched between mirror silicate layers. It is an excellent electrical insulator. Studies of defects in muscovite crystals indicated that positive charge could propagate over great distances along atomic chains in the potassium sheets in absence of an applied electric potential. The charge moved in association with anharmonic lattice excitations that moved at about sonic speed and created by nuclear recoil of the radioactive isotope K40. This was verified by measuring currents passing through crystals when irradiated with energetic alpha particles at room temperature. The charge propagated more than 1000 times the range of the alpha particles of average energy and 250 times the range of channelling particles of maximum energy. The range is limited only by size of the crystal.

arXiv comment6 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Evidence for moving breathers in a layered crystal insulator at 300K
• Localized moving breathers in a 2-D hexagonal lattice
• Ultradiscrete kinks with supersonic speed in a layered crystal with realistic potentials
• Nonlinear propagating localized modes in a 2D hexagonal crystal lattice
• Transverse intrinsic localized modes in monatomic chain and in graphene
• A supersonic crowdion in mica: Ultradiscrete kinks with energy between ${}^{40}$K recoil and transmission sputtering

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Wavelet imaging of transient energy localization in nonlinear systems at thermal equilibrium: the case study of NaI crystals at high temperature
• Nonlinear waves in a model for silicate layers
• Localized waves in silicates. What do we know from experiments?
• Discrete breathers in ${\varphi }^4$ and related models
• Frequency-momentum representation of moving breathers in a two dimensional hexagonal lattice
• A semiclassical model for charge transfer along ion chains in silicates