Research Article
A. Bahari, F. Asrafi, A. Baban
Abstract
Recently, interest in magnetotransport in bismuth is renewed because of the observation of the metallic temperature-dependence of the in-plane resistivity into an insulating-like one when a magnetic field of a few tens of mTesla is applied perpendicular to the sample plane. This procedure makes bismuth a promising candidate for applications, such as magnetic field sensors. To make high quality bismuth nano particles, it is necessary to make the grain sizes large as synthesised with sol – gel method at different contents which can be a judicious combination of lattice-matched substrates for growing bismuth nano particles with large grains. Magnetoresistance in bismuth films is also limited by grain boundary scattering. We have demonstrated a series of experiments to synthesise bismuth nano particles by sol - gel method which yield bismuth films with very small magnetoresistance. These films may even behave in a non-metallic manner with the resistance increasing with shrinking the bismuth grain size down to 50 nm.