The Thermoelectric Behaviour of two Dimensional Electron and Hole Gases and Quantum Point Contacts

Abstract

Considerable progress has been made over the last ten years in understanding the thermoelectric behaviour of low dimensional transport systems. There are two regimes to consider. At low temperatures (below about 1K) the effect of phonons is negligible. This is the “diffusion” thermopower regime which we discuss briefly for 2D electron gases (2DEGS) in Section 2. In Section 3 we discuss a particularly interesting aspect of the formalism for 2DEGS which is that it may be modified easily to apply to the quantisation effects observed recently in quantum point contacts (van Wees et al, 1988; Wharam et al, 1988; van Houten et al, 1992; Molenkamp et al 1992).