Charge Transport Transitions and Scaling in Disordered Arrays of Metallic Dots

TL;DR

This study uses numerical simulations to analyze charge transport in disordered metallic dot arrays, revealing scaling behaviors, the impact of voids, and flow transitions, aligning with experimental observations.

Contribution

It demonstrates how voids affect charge transport scaling and identifies a transition from 2D to 1D flow regimes in disordered arrays.

Findings

Power law scaling in void-free arrays' current-voltage curves.

Void-filled arrays exhibit charge bottlenecks without a single scaling.

Transition from 2D filamentary to 1D smectic flow with increasing drive.

Abstract

We examine the charge transport through disordered arrays of metallic dots using numerical simulations. We find power law scaling in the current-voltage curves for arrays containing no voids, while for void-filled arrays charge bottlenecks form and a single scaling is absent, in agreement with recent experiments. In the void-free case we also show that the scaling exponent depends on the effective dimensionality of the system. For increasing applied drives we find a transition from 2D disordered filamentary flow near threshold to a 1D smectic flow which can be identified experimentally using characteristics in the transport curves and conduction noise.