Influence of structural disorder on the current-voltage characteristic of a quasi-one-dimensional tunnel junction

Abstract

The influence of the subbarrier impurity scattering of tunneling electrons on the current-voltage characteristic of a quasi-one-dimensional insulator layer with weak structural disorder (a small impurity concentration) is considered in the one-electron approximation at T=0. An expansion in powers of the impurity concentration gives the form of the current-voltage characteristic and the conditions for small mesoscopic fluctuations of the static tunneling conductance of such a layer in the cases of resonant and nonresonant tunneling.