Transport Properties in InAs Thin Films with Different Degrees of Disorder Near the Metal–Insulator Transition

Abstract

Transport properties of Indium Arsenide (InAs) films deposited at different working pressures are investigated in the temperature interval of T ∼ 2–250 K. Electrical transport of InAs films is related to the degree of disorder, which increases as working pressure increases. Activated conductivity models satisfactorily describe conduction in the localized band-tails at high temperatures, while conductivity shows metallic characteristic at low temperatures for μc-InAs samples. The critical conductivity exponent of μc-InAs is close to 1, which indicates that μc-InAs samples exhibit a close proximity to the metal–insulator transition. The product of aB and n1/3 for samples S1 and S2 is 0.236 and 0.207, respectively, which is roughly consistent with the Mott criterion. But for α-InAs samples in the high temperature region, electron transport is described by conduction in extended states and in localized states near the Fermi level. Furthermore, a crossover from Mott variable range hopping (VRH) to the Efros–Shklovskii VRH mechanism is observed in α-InAs thin films at low temperatures.