The Private Life of Electrons in Amorphous Insulators

Since the twenties, it has been known that the stationary electron states in crystals are spatially extended objects. In the fifties, it was suggested by Anderson that in the presence of disorder, these states may become localized. In this talk, I show by direct calculation the nature of the localized states in amorphous insulators and show that this "insulator-metal transition" can be qualitatively understood with simple notions of quantum mechanics. Then, I consider the effects of a vibrating lattice and study the thermally driv

en diffusion of electron wave packets in amorphous silicon. We directly simulate the process of electron hopping, and discuss its character in amorphous silicon.

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