Abstract

The behavior of the electrical conductivity as a function of layer thickness of the superlattice systems Ni/Co, Ni/Cu, and Pd/Ag is studied. Experimentally an oscillatory dependence was found for the first two, while the latter exhibited a monotonous behavior. In our calculations we find that, in these superlattices, the current is carried by the sp-character electrons, which are quite insensitive to the interfaces, To interpret the experimentally observed resistivity oscillations we suggest a scattering mechanism of these carriers against d-character quantum well states that are present in only one of the superlattice materials, when the well state energy is close to E-F.