All-thermal transistor based on stochastic switching

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel all-thermal transistor utilizing stochastic switching in mesoscopic systems, where thermal fluctuations control charge and heat currents, enabling high amplification without energy consumption.

Contribution

It introduces a bipartite device based on single-electron tunneling that uses thermal fluctuations as a resource to switch and amplify heat and charge transport.

Findings

Thermal fluctuations can be harnessed as a resource for device operation.

The proposed device achieves high amplification factors.

Operation can be performed with no energy consumption.

Abstract

Fluctuations are strong in mesoscopic systems and have to be taken into account for the description of transport. We show that they can even be used as a resource for the operation of a system as a device. We use the physics of single-electron tunneling to propose a bipartite device working as a thermal transistor. Charge and heat currents in a two terminal conductor can be gated by thermal fluctuations from a third terminal to which it is capacitively coupled. The gate system can act as a switch that injects neither charge nor energy into the conductor hence achieving huge amplification factors. Non-thermal properties of the tunneling electrons can be exploited to operate the device with no energy consumption.