Localized self-heating in large arrays of 1D nanostructures.

One dimensional (1D) nanostructures offer a promising path towards highly efficient heating and temperature control in integrated microsystems. The so called self-heating effect can be used to modulate the response of solid state gas sensor devices. In this work, efficient self-heating was found to occur at random networks of nanostructured systems with similar power requirements to highly ordered systems (e.g. individual nanowires, where their thermal efficiency was attributed to the small dimensions of the objects). Infrared thermography and Raman spectroscopy were used to map the temperature profiles of films based on random arrangements of carbon nanofibers during self-heating. Both the techniques demonstrate consistently that heating concentrates in small regions, the here-called "hot-spots". On correlating dynamic temperature mapping with electrical measurements, we also observed that these minute hot-spots rule the resistance values observed macroscopically. A physical model of a random network of 1D resistors helped us to explain this observation. The model shows that, for a given random arrangement of 1D nanowires, current spreading through the network ends up defining a set of spots that dominate both the electrical resistance and power dissipation. Such highly localized heating explains the high power savings observed in larger nanostructured systems. This understanding opens a path to design highly efficient self-heating systems, based on random or pseudo-random distributions of 1D nanostructures.

A transfer hamiltonian model for devices based on quantum dot arrays.

We present a model of electron transport through a random distribution of interacting quantum dots embedded in a dielectric matrix to simulate realistic devices. The method underlying the model depends only on fundamental parameters of the system and it is based on the Transfer Hamiltonian approach. A set of noncoherent rate equations can be written and the interaction between the quantum dots and between the quantum dots and the electrodes is introduced by transition rates and capacitive couplings. A realistic modelization of the capacitive couplings, the transmission coefficients, the electron/hole tunneling currents, and the density of states of each quantum dot have been taken into account. The effects of the local potential are computed within the self-consistent field regime. While the description of the theoretical framework is kept as general as possible, two specific prototypical devices, an arbitrary array of quantum dots embedded in a matrix insulator and a transistor device based on quantum dots, are used to illustrate the kind of unique insight that numerical simulations based on the theory are able to provide.