Hot electrons in a tunnel structure based on metal nanoclusters

TL;DR

This paper investigates how temperature affects tunnel current in gold nanocluster structures, showing that overheating electrons eliminate current gaps and smooth out current-voltage characteristics, aligning with experimental observations.

Contribution

It introduces a model considering discrete electronic spectra and electron overheating to explain temperature-dependent tunneling behavior in metal nanoclusters.

Findings

Overheating of electrons causes disappearance of current gaps.

Temperature increases lead to smoothing of current-voltage curves.

Model aligns with experimental data on gold nanoclusters.

Abstract

We study the effect of temperature on the tunnel current in a structure based on gold clusters taking into consideration their discrete electronic spectra. We suggest that an overheating of electron subsystem leads to the disappearance of a current gap and gradual smoothing of current--voltage curves that is observed experimentally.