Heat dissipation in quasi-ballistic single-atom contacts at room temperature

Abstract

We report on evaluations of local heating in Au single-atom chains at room temperature. We performed onsite thermometry of atomic-scale Au junctions under applied sinusoidal voltage of variable amplitudes. The AC approach enabled to preclude electromigration effects for characterizing the influence of energy dissipations on the lifetime. We elucidated nonlinear increase in the effective temperature of the current-carrying single-atom chains with the voltage amplitudes, which was attributed to subtle interplay between electron-phonon scattering and electron-mediated thermal transport in the quasi-ballistic conductor. We also found that only 0.2% of the electric power contributed to local heating while the majority was consumed at the diffusive bank. The present findings can be used for thermal management of future integrated nanoelectronics.

Structural Asymmetry of Metallic Single-Atom Contacts Detected by Current–Voltage Characteristics

“…Based on our measurement resolution, the conductance jumps occur within time intervals of 0.10 ms. These results indicate a diameter of only a few atoms at the narrowest cross section of the contact and spontaneous structural rearrangements during the self-breaking process. − At the end of the self-breaking process, the conductance drops from approximately 1.0 G 0 to the noise floor within 9.5 ms, which signals the breakdown of the Au single-atomic contact. Similar self-breaking behavior has been reported in the studies by Muller et al and Hansen et al, in which Au contacts with conductances below 10 G 0 spontaneously broke at room temperature.…”

Resonances and antiresonances in heat generation by spin current in a quantum dot

“…The effective temperature of nanoscale junctions due to current induced local heating is indirectly evaluated by Huang et al through measuring the stretching length of a molecular junction [8], and by Tsutsui et al through measuring the frequency of the conductance two-level fluctuation [13]. In the past two to three decades, the reported studies of current induced local heating in nanojunctions concentrate mainly on how the phonon emission is affected by various interactions possibly existing in the junctions, by the characteristics of the leads coupled to the junctions, and by the background temperatures, etc [14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. On how the heating is influenced by the behaviors of the emitted phonon itself little research work has been done.…”

Thermal resonance in harmonically driven segmented Frenkel–Kontorova lattices with next-nearest-neighbor interactions

“…It is known that localized Joule heating presents a serious problem for the functionality and reliability of such devices [8]. The combination of small molecular heat capacity-implied by its small size-and inefficient heat transfer away form it may cause a large temperature increase that will affect the stability and integrity of the molecular junction [9][10][11]. The rate at which heat is transported away from the conducting junction is, therefore, crucial to the successful realization of nano electronic devices.…”