Phys.org December 10, 2019
While numerous techniques have been devised to image electron flows, the need remains for a nanoscale probe capable of simultaneously imaging current and voltage distributions with high sensitivity and minimal invasiveness, in a magnetic field, across a broad range of temperatures and beneath an insulating surface. An international team of researchers (Israel, UK, Japan, USA – Berkeley, Canada) produced a nanoscale detector built from a carbon nanotube transistor that can image the properties of flowing electrons with unprecedented sensitivity. They demonstrated the ability of their technique to visualize local aspects of intrinsically nonlocal transport, as in ballistic flows, which are not easily resolvable via existing methods. This technique should aid in understanding the physics of two-dimensional electronic devices and enable new classes of experiments that image electron flow through buried nanostructures in the quantum and interaction-dominated regimes…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE 1Â , 2
Artist’s conception of electron hydrodynamics illustrated as a river of electrons flowing in graphene. Credit: Weizmann Institute of Science