Transport properties of composite thin films and application to sensors

Abstract

The electrical conductivity and thermopower is discussed of composite metal-non-metal thin films with amorphous and nanodisperse microstructure, respectively, For the ternary systems CrSiO and CrSiN it is shown, that owing to their structural and compositional disorder a small temperature coefficient of resistivity can be obtained over a wide resistivity range, useful for thin film resistors and strain gauges. The thermopowers of these films are found to be essentially determined by the metallic components, which gives the possibility to make sensitive thin film thermocouples of high stability.