Conductance in Metallic Submicron Cross-Junctions

Cross conductance characteristics of a hot-spot transistor was presented. The observed nonlinearity was attributed to the reabsorption of non-equilibrium phonons emitted in the contact region by the injected electrons in the channels [1]. The temperature due to electron heating is proportional to the applied bias, T ∝ V, which results in a substantial increase of the resistance in both channels. Acoustic coupling to the substrate was avoided by fabricating the devices as free-standing. The agreement with the theory is excellent.