Electro-Thermal Transport in Silicon and Carbon Nanotube Devices

This work examines electro-thermal transport in silicon devices and in single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs). Non-local transport is found to strongly affect heat generation in quasi-ballistic silicon devices. Under such conditions, Joule heat is mainly dissipated in the drain region, and increasing power densities may lead to phonon non-equilibrium. Significant current degradation is observed in suspended SWNTs, which is attributed to the presence of hot optical phonons and to a decrease in thermal conductivity (as ~1/T) at high temperature (T) under self-heating. The high temperature thermal conductivity can then be extracted by using the high bias characteristics of suspended SWNTs.