The four-probe technique is widely used in the characterization of electrical properties of solids and thin films. To investigate the influence of finite size probes with non-planar contact on the standard four-probe ...The four-probe technique is widely used in the characterization of electrical properties of solids and thin films. To investigate the influence of finite size probes with non-planar contact on the standard four-probe method, we have proposed an image method to simulate the potential distribution within the specimen. The numerical results show that for infinitely thick samples, the standard method can only provide accurate determination of resistivity （relative error below 1%） when the ratio of the average inter-electrode spacing to the diameter of the probe is greater than 3. We have also found that disregarding the probe size brings a less dominate error than that introduced by the approximate formula, when the sample＇s thickness is close to the inter-electrode spacing.展开更多
基金Project supported by the Innovation Project of the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics,CAS(No.CXJJ-Q-DX-57)
文摘The four-probe technique is widely used in the characterization of electrical properties of solids and thin films. To investigate the influence of finite size probes with non-planar contact on the standard four-probe method, we have proposed an image method to simulate the potential distribution within the specimen. The numerical results show that for infinitely thick samples, the standard method can only provide accurate determination of resistivity （relative error below 1%） when the ratio of the average inter-electrode spacing to the diameter of the probe is greater than 3. We have also found that disregarding the probe size brings a less dominate error than that introduced by the approximate formula, when the sample＇s thickness is close to the inter-electrode spacing.
