Electron heating in a submicron-size n+ GaAs wire

Abstract We have studied electron heating in a submicron-size GaAs wire from 4.2 K to 50 K. We find that the energy relaxation rate for the electrons is of the form τ E −1 = α + β T e n where α, β are constants and T e is the electron temperature. We associate the temperature-independent term with a quasi-elastic surface scattering process in which an electron losses ∼ 1% of its energy at each collision. The temperature dependent term may be due to electron-phonon scattering. It is possible to fit the data to 2