Electrical Behavior of Composite Discontinuous Films

Composite discontinuous films of gold-rich islands grown on palladium nucleii exhibit two distinctly different regions of temperature-dependent conductivity. At low temperatures, film properties are dominated by a process characteristic of large gold-rich islands which are closely spaced. This results in a film with a high resistivity and a low activation energy. At higher temperatures, the process abruptly changes and the conductivity of the film begins to increase rapidly with temperature. The dominant transport process in this conductivity region is attributed to activated tunneling between the small palladium-rich islands.