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Spatial variation of currents and fields due to localized scatterers in metallic conduction

Award plaque by R. Landauer

Localized scatterers can be expected to give rise to spatial variations in the electric field and in the current distribution. The transport equation allowing for spatial variations is solved by first considering the homogeneous transport equation which omits electric fields. The homogeneous solution gives the purely diffusive motion of current carriers and involves large space charges. The electric field is then found, and approximate space charge neutrality is restored, by adding a particular solution of the transport equation in which the electric field is associated only with space charge but not with a current. The presence of point scatterers leads to a dipole field about each scatterer. The spatial average of a number of these dipole fields is the same as that obtained by the usual approach which does not explicitly consider the spatial variation. Infinite plane obstacles with a reflection coefficient r are also considered. These produce a resistance proportional to r/(1 − r).

Originally published:

IBM Journal of Research and Development, Volume 1, Issue 3, pp. 223-231 (1957).

Significance:

The theory of electron transport in metallic conductors was described in this 1957 paper which took account of the effects of localized scatterers.The significance of this result was not immediately recognized, but in subsequent years the paper has been cited hundreds of times. Although the Landauer conductance was not actually measured explicitly until the 1990's, it is now part of all discussions of very small devices—particularly conduction in molecules, carbon nanotubes, semiconductor quantum dots, and the very narrow semiconductor nanowires that people are trying to build. The Landauer formula is now known and to be the simplest and most natural method for calculating conductance in such small structures.

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