The breakdown of conductance quantization in a quantum point contact in the presence of random long-range impurity potential is discussed. It is shown that in the linear response regime a decisive role is played by the indirect backscattering mechanism via quasilocalized states at the Fermi level; this can provide much higher backscattering rate than any direct backscattering process. For the r...

Temperature drops at the interfaces between thermoelectric materials and the heat source and sink reduce the overall efficiency of thermoelectric systems. Nanostructured interfaces based on vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (CNTs) promise the combination of mechanical compliance and high thermal conductance required for thermoelectric modules, which are subjected to severe thermomechanical st...

The recent studies of thermal transport in suspended, supported, and encased graphene just began to uncover the richness of two-dimensional phonon physics, which is relevant to the performance and reliability of graphene-based functional materials and devices. Among the outstanding questions are the exact causes of the suppressed basal-plane thermal conductivity measured in graphene in contact ...

Contact thermal lithography is a method for fabricating patterns based on thermal effects. In contrast to photolithography, where resolution is limited by the wavelength of light used in the exposure process, thermal lithography is limited by thermal diffusion. A traditional metal-glass photomask is brought into contact with a wafer coated with a thermally sensitive polymer. The mask-wafer comb...

atomic scale, their results can be compared to the predictions of density functional theory. Not surprisingly, these calculations suggest that the clusters deform when the tip makes contact with them, and that certain arrangements of the metal clusters are unstable — in agreement with the experimental observations. In particular, the researchers find that the contact conductance of the tip–mole...

Understanding of phonon mediated thermal transport properties in nanostructured materials is essential for the intelligent design of next-generation microelectronic and thermoelectric devices. Presented here is the study of the thermal transport properties of model organic-inorganic, nanoscopically layered systems for the purpose of elucidating the dependence of bulk thermal conductivity on the...

The tip of a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope is approached towards a C60 molecule adsorbed at a pentagon-hexagon bond on Cu(100) to form a tip-molecule contact. The conductance rapidly increases to approximately 0.25 conductance quanta in the transition region from tunneling to contact. Ab-initio calculations within density functional theory and nonequilibrium Green's function tec...

Thermal conductance measures the ease with which heat leaves or enters an organism's body. Although the analysis of this physiological variable in relation to climatic and ecological factors can be traced to studies by Scholander and colleagues, only small advances have occurred ever since. Here, we analyse the relationship between minimal thermal conductance estimated during summer (Cmin) and ...

Articles you may be interested in Thermal conductivity of hybrid graphene/silicon heterostructures Thermal conductivity of silicon nanowire arrays with controlled roughness How does folding modulate thermal conductivity of graphene? Suspended graphene has the highest measured thermal conductivity of any material at room temperature. However, when graphene is supported by a substrate or encased ...

This thesis describes low-temperature transport measurements in low-dimensional systems fabricated in high-mobility GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures. These lowdimensional systems are formed by electrostatically constricting the electrons in the two-dimensional electron gas at the interface of the heterostructure, by applying a voltage to a pair of metallic gates known as a split-gate. At low temper...