Negative magnetoresistance in the nearest-neighbour hopping conduction in granular gold film

The low temperature (0.5-55 K) conduction of semicontinuous gold film vacuum deposited at T \approx 50 K is studied. The film is near the percolation threshold (thickness 3.25 nm). Its resistance is extremely sensitive to the applied voltage U. At low enough U the film behaves as an insulator (two-dimensional granular metal). In this state the dependences R(T) \propto \exp (1/T) (for T \leq 20 K) and R(U) \propto \exp (1/U)) (for T \leq 1 K and U > 0.1 V) are observed. Magnetoresistance (MR) is negative and can be described by \Delta R(H)/R(0) \propto -H^2/T. This negative MR which manifests itself for nearest-neighbour hopping is rather uncommon and, up to now, has not been clarified. The possible mechanisms of such case of negative MR are discussed.