S. Blacher et al., RELATION BETWEEN MORPHOLOGY AND ALTERNATING-CURRENT ELECTRICAL-PROPERTIES OF GRANULAR METALLIC-FILMS CLOSE TO PERCOLATION-THRESHOLD, Langmuir, 12(1), 1996, pp. 183-188
The purpose of this paper is to show how the low frequency electrical
and dielectric properties may be related to the morphology of metallic
thin films. To achieve this goal, we first summarize a recent compara
tive morphological study of granular gold films deposited on amorphous
and polycrystalline substrates. Then we present unpublished measureme
nt of the frequency-dependent conductivity of the same thin films samp
les in the range 10(2)-10(6) Hz in the immediate vicinity of the perco
lation. These measurements indicate that the dispersion of the conduct
ivity does not obey the classical percolation scaling laws. Taking adv
antage of our morphological study of these films, we show that it is p
ossible to discuss the nonuniversality of the frequency variation of t
he electrical conductivity observed in these films in the framework of
a new tunneling scaling law which depends on a morphology related tun
neling factor and new scaling exponents.