Calorimetric tunneling study of heat generation in metal-vacuum-metal tunnel junctions

Institute of Experimental Physics, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Watsonova 47, 043 53 Košice, Slovakia

Corresponding author: batko@saske.sk

Received: 30 November 2004
Accepted: 15 April 2005
Published online: 18 August 2005

Abstract

We propose a novel calorimetric tunneling (CT) experiment allowing exact determination of heat generation (or heat sinking) in individual tunnel junction (TJ) electrodes, which opens new possibilities in the field of design and development of experimental techniques. Using such an experiment we have studied the process of heat generation in normal-metal electrodes of the vacuum-barrier tunnel junction (VBTJ). The results show there exists a dependence of the mutual redistribution of the heat on applied bias voltage and the direction of tunnel current, although the total heat generated in the tunnel process is equal to the Joule heat, as expected. Moreover, the present study indicates generated heat represents the energy of non-equilibrium quasiparticles coming from inelastic electron processes accompanying the process of elastic tunneling.