Title: hopping transport
Long Title: IUPAC Gold Book - hopping transport
DOI: 10.1351/goldbook.08829
Status: current

Definition
Incoherent transport of charge carriers by hopping between adjacent energetically nearly equivalent localized sites.

Notes
1) Hopping transport is typical of molecular solids and polycrystalline and amorphous semiconductors. It takes place via electron tunneling or by overcoming energy barriers (typical of ions), and is the opposite of intra-molecular transport (band transport) of charge carriers in metallic conductors.
2) A hopping charge carrier spends most of time sitting idle on a localized site and then hops (tunnel) to an adjacent site. As a result, the charge carrier mobility at hopping transport is low (typically below \(\pu{0.01 cm2 V s}\)) and is an increasing function of temperature.

Related Terms
- charge carrier mobility: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/08780
- charge carriers: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/08775
- dispersive transport: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/08791
- electron tunneling: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/08806

Source
- PAC, 2022, 94, 15. 'Glossary of terms relating to electronic, photonic and magnetic properties of polymers (IUPAC Recommendations 2021)' on page 35 (https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2020-0501)

Other Outputs
- html: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/08829/html
- json: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/08829/json
- xml: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/08829/xml

Citation: Citation: 'hopping transport' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.08829
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Accessed: 2026-08-01T20:05:21+00:00