CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

We studied the influence of intergranular barrier fluctuations on the electrical response of 3D semiconductorpolycrystals. We first computed with a numerical simulation model the dispersion in the intergranular barrierheight on polycrystalline tin oxide due to the punctual character of the donors. Then, in order to quantify theeffects of the barrier fluctuation in the overall conductivity of the semiconductor, we added the dispersion to thewell known brick-layer model and determined the connection between impedance measurements and grainboundary resistivity. We found that, the brick-layer model gives lower values for the real intergrain resistivity.However, the error can be quantified indicating that the brick-layer model is not a bad approximation to determineelectrical properties of intergrains of a polycrystal, specially for relatively large grains.