Recently, interest in magnetotransport in bismuth is renewed because of the observation of the
metallic temperature-dependence of the in-plane resistivity into an insulating-like one when a
magnetic field of a few tens of mTesla is applied perpendicular to the sample plane. This
procedure makes bismuth a promising candidate for applications, such as magnetic field
sensors. To make high quality bismuth nano particles, it is necessary to make the grain sizes
large as synthesised with sol – gel method at different contents which can be a judicious
combination of lattice-matched substrates for growing bismuth nano particles with large grains.
Magnetoresistance in bismuth films is also limited by grain boundary scattering. We have
demonstrated a series of experiments to synthesise bismuth nano particles by sol - gel method
which yield bismuth films with very small magnetoresistance. These films may even behave in a
non-metallic manner with the resistance increasing with shrinking the bismuth grain size down
to 50 nm.
