Abstract
We argue that giant jumps of current at finite voltages observed in disordered films of InO, TiN, and YSi manifest a bistability caused by the overheating of electrons. One of the stable states is overheated and thus low resistive, while the other, high-resistive state is heated much less by the same voltage. The bistability occurs provided that cooling of electrons is inefficient and the temperature dependence of the equilibrium resistance is steep enough. We use experimental and assume phonon mechanism of the cooling taking into account its strong suppression by disorder. Our description of the details of the characteristics does not involve adjustable parameters and turns out to be in quantitative agreement with the experiments. We propose experiments for more direct checks of this physical picture.
- Received 28 January 2009
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.176803
©2009 American Physical Society
Synopsis
Overheated electrons in disordered films
Published 11 May 2009
Giant jumps in the current-voltage characteristics of disordered films could be the first evidence that electron transport in insulators can occur in the absence of phonons.
See more in Physics