Non-Linear Thermovoltage in a Single-Electron Transistor

Paolo A. Erdman (1) , Joonas T. Peltonen (2) , Bibek Bhandari (1) , Bivas Dutta (3) , Hervé Courtois (3) , Rosario Fazio (4) , Fabio Taddei (1) , Jukka P. Pekola (2)

1 SNS - Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa
2 Department of Applied Physics [Aalto]
3 NEEL - QuNES - Nano-Electronique Quantique et Spectroscopie
4 ICTP - Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics [Trieste]

We perform direct thermovoltage measurements in a single-electron transistor, using on-chip local thermometers, both in the linear and non-linear regimes. Using a model which accounts for co-tunneling, we find excellent agreement with the experimental data with no free parameters even when the temperature difference is larger than the average temperature (far-from-linear regime). This allows us to confirm the sensitivity of the thermovoltage on co-tunneling and to find that in the non-linear regime the temperature of the metallic island is a crucial parameter. Surprisingly, the metallic island tends to overheat even at zero net charge current, resulting in a reduction of the thermovoltage.

Domaines: Systèmes mésoscopiques et effet Hall quantique [cond-mat.mes-hall]; Electronique

Paolo A. Erdman, Joonas T. Peltonen, Bibek Bhandari, Bivas Dutta, Hervé Courtois, et al.. Non-Linear Thermovoltage in a Single-Electron Transistor. Physical Review B, 2019, 99 (16), pp.165405. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevB.99.165405⟩. ⟨hal-02090437⟩