968 research outputs found

    Influence of Dimensionality on Thermoelectric Device Performance

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    The role of dimensionality on the electronic performance of thermoelectric devices is clarified using the Landauer formalism, which shows that the thermoelectric coefficients are related to the transmission, T(E), and how the conducing channels, M(E), are distributed in energy. The Landauer formalism applies from the ballistic to diffusive limits and provides a clear way to compare performance in different dimensions. It also provides a physical interpretation of the "transport distribution," a quantity that arises in the Boltzmann transport equation approach. Quantitative comparison of thermoelectric coefficients in one, two, and three dimension shows that the channels may be utilized more effectively in lower-dimensions. To realize the advantage of lower dimensionality, however, the packing density must be very high, so the thicknesses of the quantum wells or wires must be small. The potential benefits of engineering M(E) into a delta-function are also investigated. When compared to a bulk semiconductor, we find the potential for ~50 % improvement in performance. The shape of M(E) improves as dimensionality decreases, but lower dimensionality itself does not guarantee better performance because it is controlled by both the shape and the magnitude of M(E). The benefits of engineering the shape of M(E) appear to be modest, but approaches to increase the magnitude of M(E) could pay large dividends.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figure

    Simulating Quasi-Ballistic Transport in Si Nanotransistors

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    Electron transport in model Si nanotransistors is examined by numerical simulation using a hierarchy of simulation methods, from full Boltzmann, to hydrodynamic, energy transport, and drift-diffusion. The on-current of a MOSFET is shown to be limited by transport across a low-field region about one mean-free-path long and located at the beginning of the channel. Commonly used transport models based on simplified solutions of the Boltzmann equation are shown to fail under such conditions. The cause for this failure is related to the neglect of the carriers\u27 drift energy and to the collision-dominated assumptions typically used in the development of simplified transport models

    Flight tests of Viking parachute system in three Mach number regimes. 1: Vehicle description, test operations, and performance

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    Flight qualifications for parachutes were tested on full-scale simulated Viking spacecraft at entry conditions for the Viking 1975 mission to Mars. The vehicle was carried to an altitude of 36.6 km for the supersonic and transonic tests by a 980.000 cu m balloon. The vehicles were released and propelled to test conditions with rocket engines. A 117,940 cu m balloon carried the test vehicle to an altitude of 27.5 km and the conditions for the subsonic tests were achieved in free fall. Aeroshell separation occurred on all test vehicles from 8 to 14 seconds after parachute deployment. This report describes: (1) the test vehicle; (2) methods used to insure that the test conditions were achieved; and (3) the balloon system design and operations. The report also presents the performance data from onboard and ground based instruments and the results from a statistical trajectory program which gives a continuous history of test-vehicle motions

    Decoherence due to contacts in ballistic nanostructures

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    The active region of a ballistic nanostructure is an open quantum-mechanical system, whose nonunitary evolution (decoherence) towards a nonequilibrium steady state is determined by carrier injection from the contacts. The purpose of this paper is to provide a simple theoretical description of the contact-induced decoherence in ballistic nanostructures, which is established within the framework of the open systems theory. The active region's evolution in the presence of contacts is generally non-Markovian. However, if the contacts' energy relaxation due to electron-electron scattering is sufficiently fast, then the contacts can be considered memoryless on timescales coarsened over their energy relaxation time, and the evolution of the current-limiting active region can be considered Markovian. Therefore, we first derive a general Markovian map in the presence of a memoryless environment, by coarse-graining the exact short-time non-Markovian dynamics of an abstract open system over the environment memory-loss time, and we give the requirements for the validity of this map. We then introduce a model contact-active region interaction that describes carrier injection from the contacts for a generic two-terminal ballistic nanostructure. Starting from this model interaction and using the Markovian dynamics derived by coarse-graining over the effective memory-loss time of the contacts, we derive the formulas for the nonequilibrium steady-state distribution functions of the forward and backward propagating states in the nanostructure's active region. On the example of a double-barrier tunneling structure, the present approach yields an I-V curve with all the prominent resonant features. The relationship to the Landauer-B\"{u}ttiker formalism is also discussed, as well as the inclusion of scattering.Comment: Published versio

    Quantum Transport in a Nanosize Silicon-on-Insulator Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor

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    An approach is developed for the determination of the current flowing through a nanosize silicon-on-insulator (SOI) metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFET). The quantum mechanical features of the electron transport are extracted from the numerical solution of the quantum Liouville equation in the Wigner function representation. Accounting for electron scattering due to ionized impurities, acoustic phonons and surface roughness at the Si/SiO2 interface, device characteristics are obtained as a function of a channel length. From the Wigner function distributions, the coexistence of the diffusive and the ballistic transport naturally emerges. It is shown that the scattering mechanisms tend to reduce the ballistic component of the transport. The ballistic component increases with decreasing the channel length.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figures, E-mail addresses: [email protected]

    Ground-based detection of sodium in the transmission spectrum of exoplanet HD209458b

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    [Context] The first detection of an atmosphere around an extrasolar planet was presented by Charbonneau and collaborators in 2002. In the optical transmission spectrum of the transiting exoplanet HD209458b, an absorption signal from sodium was measured at a level of 0.023+-0.006%, using the STIS spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope. Despite several attempts, so far only upper limits to the Na D absorption have been obtained using telescopes from the ground, and the HST result has yet to be confirmed. [Aims] The aims of this paper are to re-analyse data taken with the High Dispersion Spectrograph on the Subaru telescope, to correct for systematic effects dominating the data quality, and to improve on previous results presented in the literature. [Methods] The data reduction process was altered in several places, most importantly allowing for small shifts in the wavelength solution. The relative depth of all lines in the spectra, including the two sodium D lines, are found to correlate strongly with the continuum count level in the spectra. These variations are attributed to non-linearity effects in the CCDs. After removal of this empirical relation the uncertainties in the line depths are only a fraction above that expected from photon statistics. [Results] The sodium absorption due to the planet's atmosphere is detected at >5 sigma, at a level of 0.056+-0.007% (2x3.0 Ang band), 0.070+-0.011% (2x1.5 Ang band), and 0.135+-0.017% (2x0.75 Ang band). There is no evidence that the planetary absorption signal is shifted with respect to the stellar absorption, as recently claimed for HD189733b. The measurements in the two most narrow bands indicate that some signal is being resolved.[abridged]Comment: Latex, 7 pages: accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

    Scaling analysis of electron transport through metal-semiconducting carbon nanotube interfaces: Evolution from the molecular limit to the bulk limit

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    We present a scaling analysis of electronic and transport properties of metal-semiconducting carbon nanotube interfaces as a function of the nanotube length within the coherent transport regime, which takes fully into account atomic-scale electronic structure and three-dimensional electrostatics of the metal-nanotube interface using a real-space Green's function based self-consistent tight-binding theory. As the first example, we examine devices formed by attaching finite-size single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNT) to both high- and low- work function metallic electrodes through the dangling bonds at the end. We analyze the nature of Schottky barrier formation at the metal-nanotube interface by examining the electrostatics, the band lineup and the conductance of the metal-SWNT molecule-metal junction as a function of the SWNT molecule length and metal-SWNT coupling strength. We show that the confined cylindrical geometry and the atomistic nature of electronic processes across the metal-SWNT interface leads to a different physical picture of band alignment from that of the planar metal-semiconductor interface. We analyze the temperature and length dependence of the conductance of the SWNT junctions, which shows a transition from tunneling- to thermal activation-dominated transport with increasing nanotube length. The temperature dependence of the conductance is much weaker than that of the planar metal-semiconductor interface due to the finite number of conduction channels within the SWNT junctions. We find that the current-voltage characteristics of the metal-SWNT molecule-metal junctions are sensitive to models of the potential response to the applied source/drain bias voltages.Comment: Minor revision to appear in Phys. Rev. B. Color figures available in the online PRB version or upon request to: [email protected]

    Thermoelectric properties of the bismuth telluride nanowires in the constant-relaxation-time approximation

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    Electronic structure of bismuth telluride nanowires with the growth directions [110] and [015] is studied in the framework of anisotropic effective mass method using the parabolic band approximation. The components of the electron and hole effective mass tensor for six valleys are calculated for both growth directions. For a square nanowire, in the temperature range from 77 K to 500 K, the dependence of the Seebeck coefficient, the electron thermal and electrical conductivity as well as the figure of merit ZT on the nanowire thickness and on the excess hole concentration are investigated in the constant-relaxation-time approximation. The carrier confinement is shown to play essential role for square nanowires with thickness less than 30 nm. The confinement decreases both the carrier concentration and the thermal conductivity but increases the maximum value of Seebeck coefficient in contrast to the excess holes (impurities). The confinement effect is stronger for the direction [015] than for the direction [110] due to the carrier mass difference for these directions. The carrier confinement increases maximum value of ZT and shifts it towards high temperatures. For the p-type bismuth telluride nanowires with growth direction [110], the maximum value of the figure of merit is equal to 1.3, 1.6, and 2.8, correspondingly, at temperatures 310 K, 390 K, 480 K and the nanowire thicknesses 30 nm, 15 nm, and 7 nm. At the room temperature, the figure of merit equals 1.2, 1.3, and 1.7, respectively.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables, typos added, added references for sections 2-

    Silicon-based molecular electronics

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    Molecular electronics on silicon has distinct advantages over its metallic counterpart. We describe a theoretical formalism for transport through semiconductor-molecule heterostructures, combining a semi-empirical treatment of the bulk silicon bandstructure with a first-principles description of the molecular chemistry and its bonding with silicon. Using this method, we demonstrate that the presence of a semiconducting band-edge can lead to a novel molecular resonant tunneling diode (RTD) that shows negative differential resistance (NDR) when the molecular levels are driven by an STM potential into the semiconducting band-gap. The peaks appear for positive bias on a p-doped and negative for an n-doped substrate. Charging in these devices is compromised by the RTD action, allowing possible identification of several molecular highest occupied (HOMO) and lowest unoccupied (LUMO) levels. Recent experiments by Hersam et al. [1] support our theoretical predictions.Comment: Author list is reverse alphabetical. All authors contributed equally. Email: rakshit/liangg/ ghosha/[email protected]
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