Observation of anomalous non-Ohmic transport in current-driven nanostructures

Abstract

Sufficiently large electric current applied to metallic nanostructures can bring them far out-of-equilibrium, resulting in non-Ohmic behaviors characterized by current-dependent resistance. We experimentally demonstrate a linear dependence of resistance on current in microscopic thin-film metallic wires at cryogenic temperatures, and show that our results are inconsistent with common non-Ohmic mechanisms such as Joule heating. As the temperature is increased, the linear dependence becomes smoothed out, resulting in the crossover to behaviors consistent with Joule heating. A plausible explanation for the observed behaviors is the strongly non-equilibrium distribution of phonons generated by the current. Analysis based on this interpretation suggests that the observed anomalous current-dependent resistance can provide information about phonon transport and electron-phonon interaction at nanoscale. The ability to control the properties of phonons generated by current can lead to new routes for the optimization of thermal properties of electronic nanodevices.

arXiv commentVersion accepted for publication in PRX; 9 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (14)

• Spin Torque Ferromagnetic Resonance Induced by the Spin Hall Effect
• Energy Dissipation and Transport in Nanoscale Devices
• Observation of second sound in graphite at temperatures above 100 K
• Thickness dependence of the resistivity of Platinum group metal thin films
• Spectral Characteristics of the Microwave Emission by the Spin Hall Nano-Oscillator
• Temperature dependence of spin-transfer-induced switching of nanomagnets
• Triply degenerate nodal points in RERh${}_6$Ge${}_4$ (RE=Y, La, Lu)
• Ultrafast THz Field Control of Electronic and Structural Interactions in Vanadium Dioxide
• Phonon runaway in nanotube quantum dots
• Thermalization in simple metals: The role of electron-phonon and phonon-phonon scatterings
• Spin transfer due to quantum fluctuations of magnetization
• Relaxation of a nonequilibrium phonon distribution induced by femtosecond laser irradiation
• Nonequilibrium Excitations and Transport of Dirac Electrons in Electric-Field-Driven Graphene
• Boltzmann approach to high-order transport: the non-linear and non-local responses

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Transport and relaxation of current-generated nonequilibrium phonons from nonlocal electronic measurements