English

On Thermometer Operation of Ultrasmall Tunnel Junctions

Condensed Matter 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

The temperature dependence of the I-V characteristics of many single-electron tunneling devices enable thermometer operation of these systems. We investigate two normal conducting kinds of them, {\sl (a)} a single junction in a high-impedance environment, and {\sl (b)} a double junction. The characteristics of both devices show a crossover from Coulomb blockade at low temperatures to ohmic behavior at high temperatures. The related differential conductivity dip allows the determination of the junctions temperature. Both configurations {\sl (a)} and {\sl (b)} are expected to work at least within the range 0.5βEC100.5\le\beta E_{\rm C}\le 10, where ECE_{\rm C} is the Coulomb energy of the system under investigation. We present an analytical solution for both low- and high-temperature case of {\sl (a)} and {\sl (b)} as well as numerical results and their fit, including the effect of co-tunneling in case of a double junction.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9410044,
  title  = {On Thermometer Operation of Ultrasmall Tunnel Junctions},
  author = {H. -O. Müller and A. Hädicke and W. Krech},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9410044},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

11 pages + 8 figures, REVTeX 3.0, JE-FKS-94-5 8 pages of Postscript figures appended, The numbering of the figures is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5a, 5b, 5c and 6