Disorder-induced non-fermi liquid behavior of electrical resistivity in nanocrystalline Ni

Irrespective of the strength of the applied magnetic field (0≤H≤90kOe), strong departures from the Fermi liquid behavior of resistivity, ρ, (ρH~T2) have been observed at temperatures below 15 K in the nanocrystalline Ni samples with average crystallite sizes 10 nm and 20 nm. A combination of T2 and T4 power laws adequately describes ρH(T) in the temperature interval 16K≤T≤65K whereas the variation with temperature of ρH slows down to ~T3/2 in the range 130K≤T≤300K. These observations assert that the electron-electron scattering dominates over the coherent electron-magnon scattering in the temperature range 16 K-65 K and the incoherent electron-magnon scattering takes over at the temperatures T>130K.