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Research Paper |
Clay Mineralogical Laboratory, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, Thoravej 8, DK-2400 Copenhagen NV, Denmark
* E-mail: hl{at}geus.dk
(Received 18 October 1999; revised 21 February 2000)
Layer silicates are generally assumed to be insulators, but electron transport may take place in nm thick particles. A combined scanning tunnelling-atomic force (STM-AFM) instrument using a conducting AFM tip has been constructed to investigate this conduction. Some layer silicates, e.g. micas (muscovite and biotite), are in fact semiconductors, conduction taking place through free electrons in the tetrahedral sheet (n-type semiconductivity) and probably through polaron hopping in the octahedral sheet. This implies that these minerals can be investigated by STM. Furthermore, micas show negative differential resistance (decreasing current with increasing voltage) at 25 V.
KEYWORDS: electron transport, layer silicates, semiconductors, scanning tunnelling microscopy, atomic force microscopy
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