Interplay of long-range and short-range Coulomb interactions in an Anderson-Mott insulator

Abstract

In this paper, we tackle the complexity of coexisting disorder and Coulomb electron-electron interactions (CEEIs) in solids by addressing a strongly disordered system with intricate CEEIs and a screening that changes both with charge carrier doping level Q and temperature T . We report on an experimental comparative study of the T dependencies of the electrical conductivity σ and magnetic susceptibility χ of polyaniline pellets doped with dodecylbenzenesulfonic acid over a wide range. Thismaterial is special within the class of doped polyaniline by exhibiting in the electronic transport a crossover between a low-T variable range hopping (VRH) and a high-T nearest-neighbor hopping (NNH) well below room temperature. Moreover, there is evidence of a soft Coulomb gap C in the disorder band, which implies the existence of a long-range CEEI. Simultaneously, there is an onsite CEEI manifested as a Hubbard gap U and originating in the electronic structure of doped polyaniline, which consists of localized electron states with dynamically varying occupancy. Therefore, our samples represent an Anderson-Mott insulator in which long-range and short-range CEEIs coexist. The main result of the study is the presence of a crossover between low- and high-T regimes not only in σ(T ) but also in χ(T ), the crossover temperature T ∗ being essentially the same for both observables over the entire doping range. The relatively large electron localization length along the polymer chains results in U being small, between 12 and 20 meV for the high and low Q, respectively. Therefore, the thermal energy at T ∗ is sufficiently large to lead to an effective closing of the Hubbard gap and the consequent appearance of NNH in the electronic transport within the disorder band. C is considerably larger than U, decreasing from 190 to 30 meV as Q increases, and plays the role of an activation energy in the NNH.