Study of conductance fluctuations (1/f alpha noise) in metallic nanowires

Abstract

We have studied the conductance fluctuations in silver nanowires in the temperature range 4K to 375K. The nanowires with an average diameter of 15nm were electrochemically deposited using polycarbonate membrane as template. Principal motivation is to study low frequency defect relaxations in the nanowires that give rise to conductance fluctuations with a spectral power S(f) ∝ 1/f α . The Ag nanowires, stabilized at 400K with a current of few mA, show metallic temperature dependence. The S(f) was measured with a psuedo 4 probe ac technique with rms current of few tens of μA. We find that S V (f) (which is ∝1/f α ) shows a rapid rise at around 220K as T is increased along with an enhancement in the exponent α. The exponent α≈1-1.1 for T α fluctuations--one arising from relaxation of local defects give α≈1. The other arises from the long-range diffusion of defects characterized by α≈3/2. It is seen that for T < 220K the noise arises mainly from local defect relaxation and the temperature dependence of a follows the Dutta-Horn model. Above this temperature the contribution from long-range diffusion dominates with the noise becoming thermally activated with an activation energy (~300meV). Interestingly the activation energy is similar to but somewhat higher than that seen in micron sized films.