Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Optimal energy quanta to current conversion

2011; American Physical Society; Volume: 83; Issue: 8 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1103/physrevb.83.085428

1550-235X

Rafael Sánchez, Μ. Büttiker,

Thermal properties of materials

We present a microscopic discussion of a nano-sized structure which uses the quantization of energy levels and the physics of single charge Coulomb interaction to achieve an optimal conversion of heat flow to directed current. In our structure the quantization of energy levels and the Coulomb blockade lead to the transfer of quantized packets of energy from a hot source into an electric conductor to which it is capacitively coupled. The fluctuation generated transfer of a single energy quantum translates into the directed motion of a single electron. Thus in our structure the ratio of the charge current to the heat current is determined by the ratio of the charge quantum to the energy quantum. An important novel aspect of our approach is that the direction of energy flow and the direction of electron motion are decoupled.