Direct Observation of Hot-Electron-Enhanced Peltier Effects in Silicon Nanodevices

Abstract The study of thermoelectric behaviors in miniatured transistors is of fundamental importance for developing bottom-level thermal management. Recent experimental progress in nanothermetry has enabled studies of the microscopic temperature profiles of nanostructured metals, semiconductors, two-dimensional material, and molecular junctions. However, observations of Peltier effect in prevailing silicon (Si)—a critical step for on-chip refrigeration using Si itself—have not been addressed so far. Here, we carry out nanothermometric imaging of both electron temperature (Te) and lattice temperature (TL) of a Si nanoconstriction device and find obvious Peltier effect in the vicinity of the electron hotspots: When the electrical current passes through the nanoconstriction channel generating electron hotspots (with Te~1500 K being much higher than TL~320 K), prominent Peltier effect is directly visualized attributable to the extremely large electron temperature gradient (~1 K/nm). The quantitative measurement shows a distinctive third-power dependence of the observed Peliter on the electrical current, which is consistent with the theoretically predicted nonequilibrium Peltier effects. Our work suggests that the nonequilibrium hot carriers may be potentially utilized for enhancing the thermoelectric performance and therefore sheds new light on the nanoscale thermal management of post-Moore nanoelectronics.