Nano Express
Metallic conduction and large electron-phonon-impurity interference effect in single TiSi nanowires
1 Institute of Physics, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, 30010, Taiwan
2 Department of Applied Chemistry, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, 30010, Taiwan
3 Department of Electrophysics, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, 30010, Taiwan
Nanoscale Research Letters 2012, 7:500 doi:10.1186/1556-276X-7-500
Published: 5 September 2012Abstract
We report on the first electrical characterizations of single-crystalline TiSi nanowires (NWs) synthesized by chemical vapor deposition reactions. By utilizing the focused-ion-beam-induced deposition technique, we have delicately made four-probe contacts onto individual NWs. The NW resistivities have been measured between 2 and 300 K, which reveal overall metallic conduction with small residual resistivity ratios in the NWs. Surprisingly, we find that the effect due to the interference processes between the elastic electron scattering and the electron-phonon scattering largely dominates over the usual Boltzmann transport even at room temperature. Such prominent electron-phonon-impurity interference effect is ascribed to the presence of large amounts of disorder and high Debye temperatures in TiSi NWs.
