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Nature 435, 889-890 (16 June 2005) | doi:10.1038/435889a; Published online 15 June 2005

Low-temperature physics:  Tunnelling into the chill

Jukka Pekola1

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The trend towards ever smaller electronic instruments had left refrigerators out in the cold. Now a practical, compact device uses quantum mechanical tunnelling to cool close to absolute zero.

The French physicist Jean Peltier discovered in 1834 that when an electrical current is passed through a solid-state circuit, heat is in some cases removed. Yet one obvious application, a solid-state micro-refrigerator capable of cooling to cryogenic millikelvin temperatures, has remained science fiction.

  1. Jukka Pekola is in the Low Temperature Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology, PO Box 3500, Tietotie 3, Espoo 02150, Finland.
    Email: jukka.pekola@tkk.fi

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