Electron dephasing in nanocrystalline silicon thin films.

In combination with dephasing and weak localization theories, we have presented a detailed magnetotransport investigation for the electron dephasing characteristics in hydrogenated nanocrystalline silicon thin films. It is found that the experimental magnetoconductivity can be well fitted by an integration of diffusive Fermi surface and scaling models, taking into account both the two-dimensional quasielastic small energy transfer via scattering of localized electrons on potential barriers of several different dots (Nyquist mechanism) and three-dimensional inelastic phonon scattering contribution. The dephasing time and length have also been extracted with a temperature exponent p≈1.2 for the natural semiconductor quantum dot system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]