Variable Range Hopping in Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon-Nickel Alloys

摘要

On the insulating side of the metal-insulator transition (MIT), the study of the effect of low Temperatures T on the electrical transport in amorphous silicon-nickel alloys a-Si1-yNiy:H exhibits that the electrical conductivity follows, at the beginning, the Efros-Shklovskii Variable Range Hopping regime (ES VRH) with T-1/2. This behaviour showed that long range electron-electron interaction reduces the Density Of State of carriers (DOS) at the Fermi level and creates the Coulomb gap (CG). For T higher than a critical value of temperature TC, we obtained the Mott Variable Range Hopping regime with T-1/4, indicating that the DOS becomes almost constant in the vicinity of the Fermi level. The critical temperature TC decreases with nickel content in the alloys.