Disorder-induced metal-insulator transition in cooled silver and copper nanoparticles: A statistical study

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

Abstract

The existence of a disorder-induced metal-insulator transition (MIT) has been proved in cooled silver and copper nanoparticles by using level spacing statistics. Nanoparticles are obtained by employing molecular dynamics simulations. Results show that structural disorder is not strong enough to affect their electronic character, and it remains in the metallic regime. Whereas, electronic properties cross to the insulating regime after increasing the chemical disorder strength, W/t. Then, based on scaling theory, we have found that the critical chemical disorder WC/t in which MIT happens for silver and copper nanoparticles are 24.0±1.1 and 22.3±0.9, respectively. Its universality has also been studied.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)22-28
Number of pages7
JournalChemical physics letters
Volume681
Publication statusPublished - 2017
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0002-7673-3142/work/181861249

Keywords

Keywords

  • Chemical disorder, Cooled nanoparticles, Level spacing statistics, Metal-insulator transition, Molecular dynamics