Numerical Simulation of Hopping Conductivity in Granular Metals

ABSTRACTElectrical conduction in granular metals is simulated by mapping the hopping conductance between pairs of metal grains onto a simple cubic lattice with bonds between neighbors. By considering a log-normal distribution of grain sizes and the effect of disorder potential, the numerically calculated network conductance exhibit clear deviation from simple activation. Plotting -log a vs. T-½, where σ denotes conductivity and T the temperature, gives good straight line behavior with slopes comparable to those measured experimentally. Our results are noted to differ from those of Adkins et al.