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Electronic thermal transport measurement in low-dimensional materials with graphene non-local noise thermometry

Nature Nanotechnology volume 17, pages 166–173 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

In low-dimensional systems, the combination of reduced dimensionality, strong interactions and topology has led to a growing number of many-body quantum phenomena. Thermal transport, which is sensitive to all energy-carrying degrees of freedom, provides a discriminating probe of emergent excitations in quantum materials and devices. However, thermal transport measurements in low dimensions are dominated by the phonon contribution of the lattice, requiring an experimental approach to isolate the electronic thermal conductance. Here we measured non-local voltage fluctuations in a multi-terminal device to reveal the electronic heat transported across a mesoscopic bridge made of low-dimensional materials. Using two-dimensional graphene as a noise thermometer, we measured the quantitative electronic thermal conductance of graphene and carbon nanotubes up to 70 K, achieving a precision of ~1% of the thermal conductance quantum at 5 K. Employing linear and nonlinear thermal transport, we observed signatures of energy transport mediated by long-range interactions in one-dimensional electron systems, in agreement with a theoretical model.

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Fig. 1: Nonlocal noise thermometry in multi-terminal devices.
Fig. 2: Electronic thermal conductance of graphene.
Fig. 3: Electronic thermal conductance of carbon NTs.
Fig. 4: Nonlinear thermal transport in carbon NTs.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available at the online depository Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5500449).

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Acknowledgements

We thank B. Halperin, A. Lucas, S. D. Sarma, C. Mousatov, K. C. Fong and J. Crossno for helpful discussions, J. MacArthur for assistance with electronics design and construction, and M. Arino and H. Bartolomei for their assistance in the early stages of this work. This work was supported by ARO (W911NF-17-1-0574) for developing RF technology and characterization, and DOE (DE-SC0012260) for device fabrication and measurements. A.V.T. acknowledges support from the DoD through the NDSEG Fellowship Program. J.W. and P.K. acknowledge support from NSF (DMR-1922172) for data analysis. D.G.N. acknowledges support by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the DOE (DE-SC0017619). K.W. and T.T. acknowledge support from the Elemental Strategy Initiative conducted by the MEXT, Japan (grant number JPMXP0112101001), JSPS KAKENHI (grant number JP20H00354) and CREST (JPMJCR15F3), JST. Work by K.A.M. at the Argonne National Laboratory was supported by the DOE, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Jonah Waissman, Laurel E. Anderson, Artem V. Talanov, Zhongying Yan, Young J. Shin, Danial H. Najafabadi & Philip Kim

  2. John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Artem V. Talanov, Mehdi Rezaee & Philip Kim

  3. Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Xiaowen Feng & Daniel G. Nocera

  4. International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan

    Takashi Taniguchi

  5. Research Center for Functional Materials, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan

    Kenji Watanabe

  6. Department of Physics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Brian Skinner

  7. Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, USA

    Konstantin A. Matveev

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  1. Jonah Waissman
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Contributions

J.W. and P.K. conceived the experiments. J.W. performed the experiments and analysed the data. L.E.A. fabricated the NT–graphene devices. J.W., Y.J.S., and D.H.N. fabricated the graphene devices. M.R. fabricated the α-RuCl3 devices. X.F. and D.G.N. synthesized the bulk α-RuCl3 crystals. T.T. and K.W. synthesized the bulk hBN crystals. B.S. performed non-local noise calculations. K.A.M. developed the plasmon hopping theory. J.W., L.E.A., A.V.T., Z.Y., M.R., B.S., K.A.M. and P.K. discussed the results and interpretations. J.W. and P.K. wrote the manuscript in consultation with the other authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Philip Kim.

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Peer review information Nature Nanotechnology thanks Pramod Reddy and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Waissman, J., Anderson, L.E., Talanov, A.V. et al. Electronic thermal transport measurement in low-dimensional materials with graphene non-local noise thermometry. Nat. Nanotechnol. 17, 166–173 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-021-01015-x

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