Current transport through single grain boundaries: A scanning tunneling potentiometry study

摘要: Spatial variations of the local electric fields in current‐carrying thin gold films were studied with a scanning tunneling microscope on nanometer scale. With refined potentiometry technique we resolved potential steps at grain boundaries and investigated gradients within each grain. These are caused by nonlocal background scattering conduction electrons used to measure current density. We determine reflectivity an individual boundary without invoking averaging procedure over whole film. find that varies between R=0.7 0.9 depends their orientation.