Electron Turbulence at Nanoscale Junctions

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• 作者：Neil Bushong ; John Gamble ; Massimiliano Di Ventra
• 刊名：Nano Letters
• 出版年：2007
• 出版时间：June 2007
• 年：2007
• 卷：7
• 期：6
• 页码：1789 - 1792
• 全文大小：281K
• 年卷期：v.7,no.6(June 2007)
• ISSN：1530-6992

文摘

Electron transport through a nanostructure can be characterized in part using concepts from classical fluid dynamics. It is thus natural to askhow far the analogy can be taken and whether the electron liquid can exhibit nonlinear dynamical effects such as turbulence. Here we presentan ab initio study of the electron dynamics in nanojunctions which reveals that the latter indeed exhibits behavior quite similar to that of aclassical fluid. In particular, we find that a transition from laminar to turbulent flow occurs with increasing current, corresponding to increasingReynolds numbers. These results reveal unexpected features of electron dynamics and shed new light on our understanding of transportproperties of nanoscale systems.