  A realistic transport model showing the interplay of the hopping transport
between the outer shells of iron filled entangled multi-walled carbon nanotubes
(MWNT) and the diffusive transport through the inner part of the tubes, as a
function of the filling percentage, is developed. This model is based on
low-temperature electrical resistivity and magneto-resistance (MR)
measurements. The conductivity at low temperatures showed a crossover from
Efros-Shklovski (E-S) variable range hopping (VRH) to Mott VRH in 3 dimensions
(3D) between the neighboring tubes as the iron weight percentage is increased
from 11% to 19% in the MWNTs. The MR in the hopping regime is strongly
dependent on temperature as well as magnetic field and shows both positive and
negative signs, which are discussed in terms of wave function shrinkage and
quantum interference effects, respectively. A further increase of the iron
percentage from 19% to 31% gives a conductivity crossover from Mott VRH to 3D
weak localization (WL). This change is ascribed to the formation of long iron
nanowires at the core of the nanotubes, which yields a long dephasing length
(e.g. 30 nm) at the lowest measured temperature. Although the overall transport
in this network is described by a 3D WL model, the weak temperature dependence
of inelastic scattering length expressed as L_phi ~T^-0.3 suggests the
possibility for the presence of one-dimensional channels in the network due to
the formation of long Fe nanowires inside the tubes, which might introduce an
alignment in the random structure.
