Nanowerk December 8, 2022
Previous heat engines based on quantum dots have used reservoirs of electrons at different temperatures. An international team of researchers (Japan, Germany) has fabricated a nanoscale ‘heat engine’ that uses a property of spin as the effective working medium. They confined electrons using electric fields generated at surface metal electrodes on a gallium arsenide surface. The device had two interlinked quantum dots and a built-in charge sensor to passively monitor what was going on within the double quantum dot. A third quantum dot was used to control the double quantum dot’s thermal environment. According to the researchers their device will greatly contribute to understanding the fundamental physics of thermoelectric devices and their setup will provide an experimental platform for studying the thermodynamics of cooperative spin–charge systems. Their work is promising for exploring the development of spintronic heat engines capable of harvesting waste heat from devices. Now they are developing a technique to rapidly switch the heat flow. This will provide a new platform to study the physics and apply for development of spintronic heat engines…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Scanning electron micrograph of our sample. Credit: Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 095901,24 August 2022