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Published February 20, 2004 | Published
Journal Article Open

Percolating through networks of random thresholds: Finite temperature electron tunneling in metal nanocrystal arrays

Abstract

We investigate how temperature affects transport through large networks of nonlinear conductances with distributed thresholds. In monolayers of weakly coupled gold nanocrystals, quenched charge disorder produces a range of local thresholds for the onset of electron tunneling. Our measurements delineate two regimes separated by a crossover temperature T^∗. Up to T^∗ the nonlinear zero-temperature shape of the current-voltage curves survives, but with a threshold voltage for conduction that decreases linearly with temperature. Above T^∗ the threshold vanishes and the low-bias conductance increases rapidly with temperature. We develop a model that accounts for these findings and predicts T^∗.

Additional Information

© 2004 The American Physical Society. (Received 17 February 2003; published 18 February 2004). We thank Qiti Guo and Benjamin Lauderdale for experimental assistance and Eduard Antonyan, Terry Bigioni, Ilya Gruzberg, Alan Middleton, Toan Nguyen, and Tom Witten for stimulating discussions. X.-M. L. acknowledges support from DOE W-31-109-ENG-38. This work was supported by the UC-ANL Consortium for Nanoscience Research and by the NSF MRSEC program under DMR-0213745.

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Published - PhysRevLett.92.076801.pdf

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