Effects of Phonons, Surface and Grain Boundary Scattering in Electrical Resistivity of Nanometallics Nb

The electrical resistivity of nanometallic Niobium (Nb) as a function of thickness was studied, with thickness ranging from 5 to 100 nm at room temperature. The nanometallic Nb exhibited an increase in electrical resistivity with decreasing thickness, particularly when the thickness approached the mean free path of electrons. In this work, the (F-S) model and (M-S) model were applied to describe the increase in the electrical resistivity for nanometallic Nb. The results show the failure of the (F-S) model to describe the size effect in nanometallic Nb and the success of the (M-S) model, which shows good agreement between the fitted experimental and theoretical curves. This indicates that surface scattering is not the sole contributor to the increase in electrical resistivity and that grain boundary scattering is a major contributor to the size effect phenomenon. The values of surface and grain boundary scattering were determined (p=0.32 and R=0.0122) in this work