Carrier transport properties of nanocrystalline Er3N@C80

Electrical transport properties of the nanocrystalline Er3N@C80 with fcc crystal structure were characterized by measuring both temperature-dependent d.c. conductance and a.c. impedance. The results showed that the Er3N@C80 sample has characteristics of n-type semiconductor and an electron affinity larger than work function of gold metal. The Er3N@C80/Au interface has an ohmic contact behavior and the contact resistance was very small as compared with bulk resistance of the Er3N@C80 sample. The charge carriers in the sample were thermally excited from various trapped levels and both acoustic phonon and ionic scatterings become a dominant process in different temperature regions, respectively. At temperatures below 250 K, the activation energy of the trapped carrier was estimated to be 35.5 meV, and the ionic scattering was a dominant mechanism. On the other hand, at temperatures above 350 K, the activation energy was reduced to 15.9 meV, and the acoustic phonon scattering was a dominant mechanism. In addition, a polarization effect from the charge carrier was observed at low frequencies below 2.0 MHz, and the relative intrinsic permittivity of the Er3N@C80 nanocrystalline lattice was estimated to be 4.6 at frequency of 5.0 MHz