Thermal transport in a granular metal array

We consider interaction effects in a granular normal metal at not very low temperatures. Assuming that all weak localization effects are suppressed by the temperature we replace the initial Hamiltonian by a proper functional of phases and study the possibility for a phase transition depending on the tunneling conductance $g$. It is demonstrated for any dimension that, while at small $g$ the conductivity decays with temperature exponentially, its temperature dependence is loga...

The charge localization of single electrons on mesoscopic metallic islands leads to a suppression of the electrical current, known as the Coulomb blockade. When this correction is small, it enables primary electron thermometry, as it was first demonstrated by Pekola et al. (Phys. Rev. Letters, 73, 2903 [1994]). However, in the low temperature limit, random charge offsets influence the conductance and limit the universal behavior of a single metallic island. In this work, we n...

We investigate thermopower and thermoelectric coefficient of nano-granular materials at large tunneling conductance between the grains, g_{T} >> 1. We show that at intermediate temperatures, T >= g_{T}\delta, where \delta is the mean energy level spacing for a single grain, electron-electron interaction leads to an increase of the thermopower with decreasing grain size. We discuss our results in the light of new types of thermoelectric materials and present the behavior of th...

The description of transport phenomena in devices consisting of arrays of tunnel junctions, and the experimental confirmation of these predictions is one of the great successes of mesoscopic physics. The aim of this paper is to give a self-consistent review of sequential transport processes in such devices, based on the so-called "orthodox" model. We calculate numerically the current-voltage (I-V) curves, the conductance versus bias voltage (G-V) curves, and the associated th...

We present the theory of thermoelectric transport in metals with long-lived quasiparticles, carefully addressing the interplay of electron-electron scattering as well as electron-impurity scattering, but neglecting electron-phonon scattering. In Fermi liquids with a large Fermi surface and weak electron-impurity scattering, we provide universal and simple formulas for the behavior of the thermoelectric conductivities across the ballistic-to-hydrodynamic crossover. In this reg...

In this work, the effect of electron-phonon (e-ph) coupling on both electron and phonon transport of metals is investigated via first principles calculations. A Monte-Carlo (MC) approach for solving the coupled electron-phonon Boltzmann transport equations is developed to investigate thermal conductivity of metals. In this approach, the anisotropic electron band structure, phonon dispersion in the full Brillouin zone, and mode-dependent thermal relaxation time of electrons an...

Transport properties of granular systems are governed by Coulomb blockade effects caused by the discreteness of the electron charge. We show that, in the limit of vanishing mean level spacing on the grains, the low-temperature behavior of 1d and 2d arrays is insulating at any inter-grain coupling (characterized by a dimensionless conductance g.) In 2d and g>>1, there is a sharp Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless crossover to the conducting phase at a certain temperature, T_{BKT}...

The Efros-Shklovskii law for the conductivity of granular metals is interpreted as a result of a variable range cotunneling process. The cotunneling between distant resonant grains is predominantly elastic at low T << T_c, while it is inelastic (i.e., accompanied by creation of electron-hole pairs on a string of intermediate non-resonant grains) at T > T_c. The corresponding E-S temperature T_ES in the latter case is slightly (logarithmically) T-dependent. The magnetoresistan...

We investigate the minimum conductivity of graphene within a quasiclassical approach taking into account electron-hole coherence effects which stem from the chiral nature of low energy excitations. Relying on an analytical solution of the kinetic equation in the electron-hole coherent and incoherent cases we study both the electrical and thermal conductivity whose relation fullfills Wiedemann-Franz law. We found that the most of the previous findings based on the Boltzmann eq...

We present a unified description of the low temperature phase of granular metals that reveals a striking generality of the low temperature behaviors. Our model explains the universality of the low-temperature conductivity that coincides exactly with that of the homogeneously disordered systems and enables a straightforward derivation of low temperature characteristics of disordered conductors.