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

Abstract

We study phonons generated by current in a Pt nanowire, by measuring resistance of another nanowire separated from the first one by an insulating spacer. For thin spacers, the resistance varies almost linearly with current at cryogenic temperatures, while an additional quadratic contribution emerges for thicker spacers. These observations suggest a non-thermal distribution of current-generated phonons that relax via strongly nonlinear dynamical processes rather than few-phonon scattering. Our results provide insight into the nonequilibrium phonon dynamics at nanoscale, which may facilitate efficient heat management in electronic nanodevices.

5 pages, 4 figures; Comments, including suggestions for missed references, are appreciated

References in corpus (9)

• Phonon runaway in nanotube quantum dots
• Quantum mechanical modeling of anharmonic phonon-phonon scattering in nanostructures
• On the Role of Out-of-Equilibrium Phonons in Gated Superconducting Switches
• Crystal-symmetry-based selection rules for anharmonic phonon-phonon scattering from a group theory formalism
• Unifying description of the vibrational anomalies of amorphous materials
• Correlation between vibrational anomalies and emergent anharmonicity of local potential energy landscape in metallic glasses
• Examining normal modes as fundamental heat carriers in amorphous solids: the case of amorphous silicon
• Disorder-induced vibrational anomalies from crystalline to amorphous solids
• Decoupling between propagating acoustic waves and two-level systems in hydrogenated amorphous silicon

Cited by in corpus (1)

• On the Role of Out-of-Equilibrium Phonons in Gated Superconducting Switches