Variable range cotunneling and conductivity of a granular metal

Abstract

The Efros-Shklovskii law for the conductivity of granular metals is interpreted as a result of a variable range cotunneling process. The cotunneling between distant resonant grains is predominantly elastic at low T << T_c, while it is inelastic (i.e., accompanied by creation of electron-hole pairs on a string of intermediate non-resonant grains) at T > T_c. The corresponding E-S temperature T_ES in the latter case is slightly (logarithmically) T-dependent. The magnetoresistance in the two cases is different: it may be relatively strong and negative at T much below T_c, while at T>T_c it is suppressed due to inelastic processes which destroy the interference.

Submitted to JETP Letters

References in corpus (4)

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• Thermodynamics and decay of de Sitter vacuum
• Hopping conductivity of a suspension of flexible wires in an insulator
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• Hopping conductance and macroscopic quantum tunneling effect in three dimensional Pb${}_x$(SiO${}_2$)${}_{1-x}$ nanogranular films
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• Dielectric quantification of conductivity limitations due to nanofiller size in conductive powders and nanocomposites
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• Single-electron latch with granular film charge leakage suppressor
• Regimes of correlated hopping via a two-site interacting chain
• Giant magnetoresistance for ensembles of ferromagnetic granules in variable range hopping conductivity regime