An Ab Initio Investigation on Boundary Resistance for Metallic Grains

The electronic transport properties through metallic grain boundaries are investigated by a self-consistent approach combined with wave-function matching. It is demonstrated that the interface resistance, 2SR(GB) (sample area S times resistance R), for a 36.8 degrees [001] tilt grain boundary is 0.604 x 10(-15) Omega m(2), which is comparable with the previous room-temperature experimental result of SRGB = 0.36 x 10(-15) Omega m(2) for the common grain boundary of face-centered cubic (fcc) copper. Furthermore, the resistance for a twin boundary is one order of magnitude lower than that of a common grain boundary, and is only half of that for stacking faults of fcc metal copper, as is expected. The results for other fcc metals are also discussed. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.