Heating Effects in a Chain of Quantum Dots

Abstract

We study heating effects in a chain of weakly coupled grains due to electron-hole pair creation. The main mechanism for the latter at low temperatures is due to inelastic electron cotunneling processes in the array. We develop a quantitative kinetic theory for these systems and calculate the array temperature profile as a function of grain parameters, bias voltage or current, and time and show that for nanoscale size grains the heating effects are pronounced and easily measurable in experiments. In the low- and high-voltage limits we solve the stationary heat-flux equation analytically. We demonstrate the over-heating hysteresis in the large-current or voltage regimes. In addition we consider the influence of a substrate on the system which acts as a heat sink. We show that nano dot chains can be used as highly sensitive thermometers over a broad range of temperatures.

9 pages, 8 figures, revtex 4.1

References in corpus (4)

• Heat Transistor: Demonstration of Gate-Controlled Electron Refrigeration
• Thermal transport in a granular metal array
• Coulomb blockade and transport in a chain of one-dimensional quantum dots
• Thermoelectric performance of weakly coupled granular materials

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Relaxation dynamics of the electron distribution in the Coulomb blockade problem
• Giant Quantum Freezing of Tunnel Junctions mediated by Environments
• Universality and quantization of the power to heat ratio in nano-granular systems
• Interplay of charge and heat transport in a nano-junction in the out-of-equilibrium cotunneling regime