Electrical Resistivity of a Thin Metallic Film
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
2007-05-23 v1
Abstract
The electrical resistivity of a pure sample of a thin metallic film is found to depend on the boundary conditions. This conclusion is supported by a free-electron model calculation and confirmed by an ab initio relativistic Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker computation. The low-temperature resistivity is found to be zero for a free-standing film (reflecting boundary conditions) but nonzero when the film is sandwiched between two semi-infinite samples of the same material (outgoing boundary conditions). In the latter case, this resistivity scales inversely with the number of monolayers and is due to the background diffusive scattering by a finite lattice.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9911093,
title = {Electrical Resistivity of a Thin Metallic Film},
author = {Horacio E. Camblong and Peter M. Levy},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9911093},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
20 pages. To be published in Physical Review B, December 15, 1999