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.

The aim of the book is to give an actual survey on the resistivity of thin metal and semiconductor films interacting with gases. We discuss the influence of the substrate material and the annealing treatment of the films, presenting our experimental data as well as theoretical models to calculate the scattering cross section of the conduction electrons in the frame-work of the scattering hypothesis. Main emphasis is laid on the comparison of gold and silver films which exhibit nearly the same lattice structure but differ in their chemical activity. In conclusion, the most important quantity for the interpretation is the surface charging z while the correlation with the optical data or the frustrated IR vibrations seems the show a more material-specific character. Z can be calculated on the basis of the density functional formalism or the self-consistent field approximation using Mulliken's population analysis.