Introduction:

• Electrical property of the materials is one of the most important properties, which helps to
classify the materials. For instance, solids may be classified in terms of their resistivity or
conductivity as conductors, semiconductors or insulators.

• The electrical resistivity, an intrinsic property that quantifies how strongly a given material
opposes the flow of electrical current, can be measured using several ways depending on the
magnitude of the resistance involved in the materials. Two general methods involved for
measuring the resistance of the materials are:

Ohm's law: If physical conditions such as temperature, stress, strain remains unchanged in the
materials, then potential difference (V) across two ends of a conductor is proportional to
current (I) flowing through a conductor, i.e.,

V ∝ I (or)

V=IR

The constant of proportionality, R, is called resistance of the material.

Resistivity:

At a given constant temperature, the resistance R of the conductor is (i) proportional to its
length (L) and (ii) inversely proportional to its area of cross-section (A), i.e.,

R ∝ L / A (or)

R=ρL/A

The constant of proportionality, ρ, is called resistivity of the material, which is defined as the
resistance offered by a wire of this materials of unit length and unit cross-sectional area.

Units of resistance and resistivity are Ohm (Ω) and Ohm-meter (Ω -m), respectively.

Two-probe method:

Let us consider a long thin wire of length, L and uniform cross section, A or the materials with a
long parallelepiped shape with uniform cross section as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Schematic of two-probe setup

The potential difference (V) between the two contacts at the ends of the wire can be measured
by a voltmeter. Therefore, the resistivity of the wire is, i.e.,

In general, we use a multimeter for measuring the resistance of the materials. The typical range
of resistance measured using the multimeter is 1Ω to 2MΩ, but varies with the models and
company. While the two-probe method is a simple and advantageous method for measuring
resistance above 1Ω directly, this method suffers from certain issues.

(i) Error due to contact resistance of the measuring leads,

(ii) Materials having random shapes,

(iii) Soldering of the test leads on some materials would be difficult,

(iv) Heating of the leads during soldering may inject additional impurities in materials such as
semiconductors and thereby affecting the intrinsic electrical resistivity largely.

In order to overcome the above problems, four-probe method is widely proposed.

This method provides the measurement of the resistivity of the specimen having the wide variety
of shapes but with uniform cross-section.

The soldering contacts proposed in two-probe method are replaced by pressure contacts to
eliminate the last two problems summarized above.

Four-probe method:

In this method, four probes are utilized to measure the resistance of the samples. For example,
two of the outer probes are used to send the current from the source meter and other two inner
probes are used to measure the voltage drop across the sample.

Two common techniques used in four-probe method are (i) Four-point collinear probe method
and (ii) van der Pauw method.

Four-point collinear probe method:

This is the most common way of measuring the resistivity of a material, which involves four
equally spaced probes as shown in Figure 2 in contact with a materials of unknown resistance.
 Figure 2: Schematic of four-point collinear probe method

This method can be used either in bulk or thin film specimen.

For Bulk:

Consider a bulk material as shown in Figure 3, where the thickness (t) of the materials is much
higher than the space between the probes (s), then the differential resistance due to spherical
protrusion of current emanating from the outer probe tips is

Figure 3: Schematic of four-point collinear probe method on bulk material.

Carrying out the integration between the inner probe tips,

Due to the superposition of current at outer tips, R = V / (2I ).

Therefore,

For Thin sheet:

For a very thin layer as shown in Figure 4, where the thickness of the sheet t << the space
between the probes, s, we can get current rings instead of spheres. Therefore, the expression
for the area is A = 2πx.t. Therefore, the derivation for resistance turns out to be:

Figure 4: Schematic of four-point collinear probe method on thin sheet.

Due to the superposition of current at outer tips, R = V / (2 I ).

Therefore, the sheet resistivity for a thin sheet is

This expression is independent of probe spacing.

This method involves applying a current and measuring voltage using four small contact on the
circumference of a flat, arbitrarily shaped sample of uniform thickness.

The resistivity can be obtained from a total of eight measurements that are made around the
periphery of the sample with the configurations as shown in Figure 5.
 Figure 5: Schematic of different configurations involved in van der Pauw method

Once all the voltages are taken, two values of resistivity ρA and ρB can be derived as follows:

where ρA and ρB are volume resistivity in Ohm-cm, ts is the sample thickness in cm, V1 to
V8represent the voltages measured by the voltmeter under eight geometrics respectively, I is the
current through the sample in amperes.

For a perfect symmetry system, fA = fB ≈ 1 and therefore, the average resistivity turns out to be

A conventional Hot-Probe experiment enables a simple and efficient way to distin-guish

Here, a couple of a cold probe and a hot probe are attached to the semiconductor surface. The
hot probe is connected to the positive terminal of the multi-meter while the cold probe is
connected to the negative terminal. While applying the cold and hot probes to an n-type
semiconductor, positive voltage readout is obtained in the meter, whereas for a p-type
semiconductor, negative voltage is obtained. An explanation of this experiment is that the
thermally excited majority free charged carriers are translated within the semi-conductor
from the hot probe to the cold probe. The mechanism for this motion within the
semiconductor is of a diffusion type since the material is uniformly doped due to the con-
stant heating in the hot probe contact. These translated majority carriers define the electrical
potential sign of the measured current in the multi-meter.