Transport properties of antimony nanowires - art. no. 085406

This paper reports the temperature dependence of the resistivity and the lo ngitudinal and transverse magnetoresistance of antimony quantum wires with diameters ranging from 200 down to 10 nm, The samples were prepared in poro us anodic alumina host materials using the vapor-phase technique. A theoret ical calculation of the band structure of Sb nanowires is presented and a t ransport model for nanowire systems is used to explain the measured tempera ture dependence of the resistivity, showing both classical and quantum fini te-size effects. The magnetoresistance is quadratic at low fields. In the 2 00 nm wires, the low-temperature (T<50 K) longitudinal magnetoresistance ex hibits a maximum at the magnetic field where the cyclotron radius roughly c orresponds to the wire radius. Surface scattering dominates below that fiel d, and bulklike scattering dominates above it. in the narrower wires. the l ow-temperature (below 10 K for 50 nm wires and below 40 K for 10 nm wires) magnetoresistance shows a steplike feature at the critical magnetic field w here the magnetic length equals the wire diameter, as was the case for bism uth wires. This phenomenon is independent of the effective masses. dependin g only on the geometry of the nanowires and on the magnetic flux in the wir e, and it is therefore attributed to a localization effect.