Single grain heating due to inelastic cotunneling

TL;DR

This paper investigates how inelastic cotunneling causes heating in a single metallic quantum dot, providing detailed temperature profiles and highlighting measurable effects at nanoscale sizes.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of heating effects due to inelastic cotunneling in metallic quantum dots, including temperature profiles as functions of various parameters.

Findings

Heating effects are significant and measurable in nanoscale grains.

Temperature profiles depend on grain parameters, bias voltage, and time.

Inelastic cotunneling is the dominant heating mechanism at low temperatures.

Abstract

We study heating effects of a single metallic quantum dot weakly coupled to two leads. The dominant mechanism for heating at low temperatures is due to inelastic electron cotunneling processes. We calculate the grain temperature profile as a function of grain parameters, bias voltage, and time and show that for nanoscale size grains the heating effects are pronounced and easily measurable in experiments.