Effective-Medium Theory for the Electric-Field Dependence of the Hopping Conductivity of Disordered Solids

Author

Paul Ernest Parris, Missouri University of Science and TechnologyFollow
B. D. Bookout

Abstract

We derive a general effective-medium theory for describing biased diffusion on a bond-disordered lattice in the presence of an external driving field. In our theory, the effective medium associated with a disordered d-dimensional lattice is characterized, for each value of the applied field, by 2d independent parameters describing, respectively, the net drift velocity v_v and the diffusion constant D_vv describing the spread of a carrier packet about its mean value, for each of the d crystal axes. The theory correctly predicts the velocity transition occurring in an exactly soluble model studied by Derrida and, in contrast to other recent theories, correctly reproduces the critical velocity at which this transition occurs.

Recommended Citation

P. E. Parris and B. D. Bookout, "Effective-Medium Theory for the Electric-Field Dependence of the Hopping Conductivity of Disordered Solids," Physical Review B (Condensed Matter), vol. 53, no. 2, pp. 629 - 635, American Physical Society (APS), Jan 1996.

The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.53.629

Department(s)

Physics

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

0163-1829

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Final Version

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 1996 American Physical Society (APS), All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jan 1996