The intent of this book is to report on the electrical, optical, and structural properties of silver and gold films in dependence on substrate material, annealing treatment, and gas adsorption. A main point is the calculation of the scattering cross section of the conduction electrons. All results are substantiated by extended experimental data, as well as numerous illustrations and tables.

It is known that some of the abnormal magnetic properties of ultrathin metal films, and their electrical conduction mechanism, can be explained on the basis of their "island" structure. It can be shown that the electrical conductivity and the temperature coefficient of resistance are controlled principally by the radius of the islands and the distances between them. By suitably adjusting these structural parameters, both of which enter the relation for the film conductivity exponentially, one can be made to predominate over the other. Thus, if the islands and the distances between them are small, very large negative temperature coefficients are observed. On the other hand, if the islands are very large or the thermal expansion coefficient of the substrate is unusually high, positive temperature coefficients can be observed, often several times larger than even the bulk values, even for films of resistances as high as 10 to the 6th power omega/square or higher.

The electrical conduction mechanism in the film plane of ultrathin, evaporated metal films was investigated. These films consist of a planar array of many small discrete islands. The conduction process consists of, first, charge carrier creation which is thermally activated and involves charge transfer between initially neutral particles, and, second, the drift velocity of these charges in an applied field. Charge transfer between particles occurs by tunneling. The following features were predicted and can be verified experimentally: the conductivity depends exponentially on reciprocal temperature, and it should be independent of field at low fields. Deviations from the exponential temperature dependence can be understood in terms of a spectrum of activation energies, while deviations from Ohm's law at high fields can be explained readily in terms of a field dependent activation energy. (Author).