In situ electrical transport measurements and self-organization in gold nanoparticle films during and after deposition

In the first part of this paper, a new method is shown which is able to predict the particle size of conductive nanoparticle films in situ, during deposition. The method is used for the measurement of the time-derivative of conductance fluctuations during deposition. The second part of the paper deals with in situ conductance measurements on gold films during deposition. During the measurement, various electrical fields have been applied in order to study the possible influence of the field magnitude on the film formation. The observed effects have been interpreted by the biased percolation model. A possible technological application of the observed phenomenon is the fabrication of nanoparticle films with controlled disorder, e.g. in chemical sensors.