The study of electron scattering mechanisms in single crystal oxide nanowires

Abstract

We report on transport measurements of individual Sn doped In2O3 nanowires. From these measurements we point out that spin–orbit and boundary scattering mechanisms seem to give a negligible contribution to the transport of electrons in these nanowires. In fact, these results can be extended to other oxide systems: the presence of a weak disorder arising from the random potential at the boundaries screen electrons away from the surface into the nanowire. Electrons travelling through the nanowire in inner conducting channels are not directly influenced by the surfaces and the boundary scattering is decreased. These findings were also supported by calculations of the electron distribution in the cross-section of the nanowires when some disorder is taken into account.

Disorder induced interface states and their influence on the Al/Ge nanowires Schottky devices

“…As above mentioned, the Ge/GeO x interface is disordered due to its nature, and it induces a disordered potential that should affect the conduction of electrons inside the Ge nanowires. 15 In fact, a small surface disorder could dominate nanowire bulk properties as the sizes of the samples are scaled down (by controlling the Fermi level and screening out electrons from surface, for instance). As an example of this problem, it is interesting to mention that current-voltage curves obtained in devices produced under the same conditions and using identical metallic contacts can be very different presenting electrical characteristics ranging from Schottky to ohmic behaviour.…”

“…This mechanism arises when there is a sufficient amount of disorder states causing the random component of the crystalline potential to be large enough to localize the electrons wave functions near the band edges. [11][12][13][14] In fact, we recently show that not only the contribution of the localization of charges on a nanostructures surface alter its conduction process [15][16][17] but also the VRH mechanism can be observed in as-grown Ge nanowires as a consequence of this behaviour. 12 In this work electron transport measurements and numerical calculations were associated in order to study the effects of the interface states on the characteristics of the electrical contacts fabricated to Ge nanowires covered with a thin oxide layer (<2 nm).…”

Optical and transport properties correlation driven by amorphous/crystalline disorder in InP nanowires

“…Usually, the disorder leads to localized behaviour of carriers transport and to a transition from a simple excitation semiconducting mechanism to another one, such as the variable range hopping (VRH) mechanism. This mechanism arises when a sufficient amount of disorder states causes the random component of the crystalline potential to be large enough to localize the electron wave functions near the band edges [24][25][26].…”