Electronic transport properties of amorphous FeSc₃ produced by mechanical milling

The electrical resistivity (ρ) of amorphous FeSc₃ prepared by mechanical milling has been measured from 4.2 K to 300 K. The following features were observed: ρ has minimum at about 8.7 K and its behavior at low temperatures (below 50 K) is typical for semiconductor materials. Moreover the ρ values show an anomalous increase when the temperature is reduced from 250 K to 50 K. Such increase of ρ has been observed in many amorphous materials and it is related to disordered structure. AC susceptibility measurements show that the analyzed sample is inhomogenous. In this work, we used the diffraction or elastic scattering model of the electronic transport proposed by Faber-Ziman in order to explain the linear temperature dependence of resistivity between 50 K and 250 K. Finally, Mössbauer spectroscopy has been performed on the milled powder samples.