Hopping conductivity and activated transport in In_xGa_1-xAs quantum wells

Abstract:

We present measurements of the diagonal R_xx and off-diagonal R_xy magnetoresistance under quantum Hall conditions on several high electron mobility transistors (HEMT) based on In_xGa_1-xAs quantum wells. From the magnetoresistance tensor we obtain the longitudinal conductivity σ _xx . We study the transport mechanisms near the σ _xx minima at temperatures ranging between 2 K and 35 K; activated transport is the dominant mechanism for temperatures above 7 K while variable range hopping conductivity is significant for lower temperatures. We show that electron-electron correlations should be taken into account to explain the conductivity vs temperature behaviour below 5 K. Finally, we study the behaviour of the localization length as a function of Landau level filling and obtain a critical exponent γ = 3.45±0.15.