Onset of energy dissipation in ballistic atomic wires.

摘要: The trend toward miniaturization in electronics will soon lead to devices of nanometer scale which quantum effects become relevant. ultimate conductor is a perfect one-dimensional wire, such as an atomic chain [1,2] or semiconducting heterostructure [3]. In these wires the electrons are ballistic since there no defects inhibit resistance-free currents limiting factor current-carrying capacity wire dissipation, results heating. Two mechanisms contribute resistance metallic wire: elastic scattering with and impurities inelastic lattice vibrations [4]. absence scattering, can propagate freely transport said be ballistic. This situation possible nanoscale where mean-free path much longer than length device. two-terminal zero-bias single-mode h2e 2 . entirely associated connections electrodes [5], being intrinsic zero, recently demonstrated fabricated from GaAsAlGaAs heterostructures [3], agreement Landauer framework [6,7]. Within this framework, applied voltage serves unbalance chemical potentials for propagating each direction drops at contacts not within wire. Joule dissipation assumed take place far away contact (at relaxation length), holes relax Fermi level electrodes. picture correct bias voltages close implies vanishingly small (note that experiment Ref. [3] were smaller 1 nA).