If they passed a
large amount of electric current into the material, it would exhibit a huge spike in resistance
but would return to its original level shortly after the current flow stopped."
This is interesting -- large amounts of current being associated with increased resistance...
I have never seen or read about something like that with respect to other electronic components or systems.
It would be an interesting experiment to see if this effect could be simulated, and if so, under what conditions, in non-nanoparticle standard regular-sized electrical components...
I'm guessing (but not knowing!) that you'd you'd need a very high amount of current (like something from a car battery), but at a very low voltage, like maybe 0.1 or 0.01 volts (or less), and maybe like a very thin long wire made of some mostly-conducitive material, and then maybe something at some scale or low voltage if the experimenter was lucky...
Anyway, large current associated with increased resistance... I've never heard of that one before, except I suppose if the current heats the electrical path so much that it destroys it... which would be different for different materials, voltages, cross-section of conductors, temperatures, etc., etc.
I'd assume that wouldn't happen at the nanoscale and/or in a switching semiconductor... but perhaps I might be wrong on some level...