Localization of conduction electrons in nanometer metal Dy

Abstract

The Changes of resistivity with temperature of bulk nanocrystalline metal dysprosium samples with different grain sizes were studied in this paper. The value of the resistivity is a sum of the residual rsistivity ρres=ρ (0), magnetic scatter resistivity ρmag(T) and phonon scatter resistivity ρpho(T). The mean grain sizes are 10 nm, 30 nm, 100 nm and 1000 nm. It was experimentally found that the magnetic scatter resistivity ρmag(T) and phonon scatter resistivity ρpho(T) increase as temperature increases. The measured values of the resistivities of the four samples are in the range of (0.8—252)×10-8Ω ·m, representing metalloid features. Experiments also showed that the residual rsistivity ρ (0) of the sample with 10nm mean grain size is about 98.6×10-8Ω ·m, which is about one order of magnitude greater than those of the other three samples. This is an experimental example of the energy band narrowing and the appearance of electron localization with the increase of disorder degree.