Mesoscopic Diffusion Thermopower in Two-Dimensional Electron Gases

Stephan Rojek, Jürgen König

Published 2014-06-27, updated 2014-11-18Version 2

The diffusion of energy that is locally deposited into two-dimensional electron gases by Joule heating generates transverse voltages across devices with broken symmetry. For mesoscopic structures characterized by device dimensions comparable to the energy diffusion length, the resulting thermopower strongly depends on details of the potential profile defined by electric gates. We discuss these mesoscopic features within a diffusion thermopower model and propose schemes to measure the energy diffusion length and its dependence on gate voltage.