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Professor Koh and his team at University of Texas at Arlington reported in Nature Communication a means of enabling electrons to transport at room temperature like electrons do at very low temperatures with little energy loss by passing electrons through an energy filter made of a quantum well. The team has received funding to apply the discovery to high-density transistors made in the form of nanopillars. Read the original reports: Nanotechnology aids in cooling electrons without external sources, Energy-filtered cold electron transport at room temperature.
(a) Left: the double-barrier tunnel junction (DBTJ) structure. (a) Right: DBTJ structure with a quantum well inserted between the source and tunnelling barrier 1. (b) Schematic of the DBTJ structure with the energy filter inserted. Top: cross-sectional view. The dotted arrows indicate electron tunnelling paths. Bottom: three-dimensional view of one device unit. The schematics are not to scale. Credit Koh et al., Nature Communication. (Posted by Y. Tzeng)