ELECTRICAL-PROPERTIES OF SEMICONDUCTING OXIDE GLASSES

Studies of the electrical conductivity of semiconducting oxide glasses are reviewed in the framework of Mott's theory for such materials. An examination of the conduction processes in semiconducting oxide glasses confirms the applicability of the polaronic hopping model of electrical transport. Some deviation from Mott's theory are observed in phase-separated glasses. The thermal activation energy for conduction appears to be the dominating factor which controls conductivity, although in many cases the pre-exponential factor also has a great influence on conductivity. The diffusion-like conduction mechanism in a system of randomly distributed ions is probably not applicable to glasses that exhibit some kind of order in the structure, such as clustering. © 1979.