Nanodevices and Maxwell's Demon

Abstract

In the last twenty years there has been significant progress in our understanding of quantum transport far from equilibrium and a conceptual framework has emerged through a combination of the Landauer approach with the non-equilibrium Green function (NEGF) method, which is now being widely used in the analysis and design of nanoscale devices. It provides a unified description for all kinds of devices from molecular conductors to carbon nanotubes to silicon transistors covering different transport regimes from the ballistic to the diffusive limit. In this talk I use a simple version of this model to analyze a specially designed device that could be called an electronic Maxwell's demon, one that lets electrons go preferentially in one direction over another. My objective is to illustrate the fundamental role of contacts and demons in transport and energy conversion. The discussion is kept at an academic level steering clear of real world details, but the illustrative devices we use are very much within the capabilities of present-day technology. For example, recent experiments on thermoelectric effects in molecular conductors agree well with the predictions from our model. The Maxwell's demon device itself is very similar to the pentalayer spin-torque device which has been studied by a number of groups though we are not aware of any discussion of the possibility of using the device as a nanoscale heat engine or as a refrigerator as proposed here. However, my objective is not to evaluate possible practical applications. Rather it is to introduce a simple transparent model showing how out-of-equibrium demons suitably incorporated into nanodevices can achieve energy conversion.