The influence of a Coulomb gap in the whole variable range hopping regime

Abstract

The temperature dependence of the electrical resistivity in insulator systems with a Coulomb gap in the density of states is expressed by a very simple function which coincides with the Efros-Shklovskii T^(-1/2)result, at temperatures lower than some value Tlim. Above this limit it consists of the product of the Mott T^(-1/4) exponential with another one like a simply thermally activation process. It fits well several experimental results reported as having a crossover between the Efros-Shklovskii and Mott regimes, and allows the determination of the gap parameters even in experiments that do not reach the T^(-1/2) regime. Also it accounts for some experimental results reported to follow a T^(-n) behavior with 0.5<n<1.