The Physics & Astronomy Colloquium Series presents Douglas Natelson of Rice University on “Heating and Thermoelectricity at the Nanoscale” on Friday, January 27, at 4:10 p.m. in Walter 245.
Douglas Natelson
Abstract: When a wire is connected across a battery, energy is transferred from the macroscopic electrochemical potential difference of the battery terminals to the disorganized, microscopic degrees of freedom of the electrons and vibrational motions of the wire constituents. How does this process work when the critical part of the “wire” consists of only a few atoms? Atomic- and molecular scale junctions enable experiments to examine quantum systems driven far from equilibrium. I will present measurements of single-molecule Raman scattering in such junctions, experiments that provide information about the evolution of the local electronic and vibrational distributions in biased junctions. I will also report how those investigations have led serendipitously to recent exciting observations about photothermoelectric (PTE) effects in nanoscale metal structures, showing that even “simple” metal structures may not be so simple. I will discuss the implications of the data and prospects for future basic research and device applications.
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