Electron-phonon interaction in nanodevices

TL;DR

This paper investigates how electron-phonon interactions, specifically up-conversion effects, influence electronic transport in nanotransistors, revealing spontaneous currents and voltages in asymmetric quantum dot devices through theoretical modeling.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical model combining Datta's toy model with kinetic equations to analyze up-conversion effects on electron transport in nanotransistors.

Findings

Spontaneous current can arise in asymmetric nanotransistors due to up-conversion.

Up-conversion effects can induce spontaneous voltages between source and drain.

Theoretical results relate to experimental observations of current-voltage characteristics in nanostructures.

Abstract

The effect of the up-conversion of the electronic energy level occupation was earlier interpreted as an implication of the multiple scattering of the charge carriers on the longitudinal optical phonons of the lattice vibrations in a small system like a quantum dot. In this work we study the influence of this effect on the electronic motion in a nanotransistor represented by a quantum dot connected to two electric wires and a gate electrode. We show that in an asymmetric nanotransistor the up-conversion effect gives rise to a spontaneous current between the source and the drain, or to an appearance of a spontaneous voltage between these electrodes. The effect will be studied basing on the well known Datta's Toy Model of the theoretical description of the nanotransistor and on additional kinetic equations giving the multiple scattering of electrons in the quantum dot, in the self-consistent Born approximation to the electronic self-energy. We shall also briefly discuss the relation of this theoretical result to existing experiments on current-voltage characteristics in gated nanostructures.