Electron Transport and Spin Scattering in Very Thin Disordered Metallic Films

A. Paja and B.J. Spisak Faculty of Physics and Applied Computer Science AGH University of Science and Technology, 30-059 Kraków, Poland

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Received: 4 07 2007;

We consider the electron transport through a very thin disordered metallic film doped with magnetic impurities. We treat the film as a quasi-two-dimensional system with structural disorder where some ions have spins and other are spinless. The interaction of conduction electrons with localized spins is described by means of the exchange term of the Hamiltonian. The scattering is treated in the first Born approximation and the potential is assumed to be the Coulomb screened one. The total effective cross-section is calculated as a sum of the part responsible for the potential scattering and the second part which comes from the spin-spin scattering. The Fermi sphere splits into separate sheets due to the finite size of the system in the z direction, therefore, the cross-section and the relaxation time are calculated for each sheet independently. The total transport relaxation time and the conductivity are obtained as functions of the thickness of the system and the contents of magnetic impurities. Some model calculations have been made for a thin disordered film of copper doped with manganese.

DOI: 10.12693/APhysPolA.112.1289 PACS numbers: 72.15.Cz, 72.25.Ba, 73.50.-h, 73.63.-b