The transport properties of a conduction junction model characterized by two mutually coupled channels that strongly differ in their couplings to the leads are investigated. Models of this type describe molecular redox junctions (where a level that is weakly coupled to the leads controls the molecular charge, while a strongly coupled one dominates the molecular conduction), and electron counting devices in which the current in a point contact is sensitive to the charging state of a nearby quantum dot. Here we consider the case where transport in the strongly coupled channel has to be described quantum mechanically (covering the full range between sequential tunneling and co-tunneling), while conduction through the weakly coupled channel is a sequential process that could by itself be described by a simple master equation. We compare the result of a full quantum calculation based on the pseudoparticle non-equilibrium Green function method to that obtained from an approximate mixed quantum-classical calculation, where correlations between the channels are taken into account through either the averaged rates or the averaged energy. We find, for the steady state current, that the approximation based on the averaged rates works well in most of the voltage regime, with marked deviations from the full quantum results only at the threshold for charging the weekly coupled level. These deviations are important for accurate description of the negative differential conduction behavior that often characterizes redox molecular junctions in the neighborhood of this threshold.
The surface conductivity for conduction electrons with a fixed chirality in a topological insulator with impurities scattering is considered. The surface excitations are described by the Weyl Hamiltonian. For a finite chemical potential one projects out the hole band and one obtains a single electronic band with a fixed chirality. One obtains a model of spinless electrons which experience a half vortex when they return to the origin. As a result the conductivity is equivalent to a spinless problem with correlated noise which gives rise to anti-localization. We compute conductivity as a functio…
Previous studies have predicted the failure of Fourier's law of thermal conduction due to the existence of wave like propagation of heat with finite propagation speed. This non-Fourier thermal transport phenomenon can appear in both the hydrodynamic and (quasi) ballistic regimes. Hence, it is not easy to clearly distinguish these two non-Fourier regimes only by this phenomenon. In this work, the transient heat propagation in homogeneous thermal system is studied based on the phonon Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) under the Callaway model. Given a quasi-one or quasi-two (three) dimensional s…
We study nondiffusive thermal transport by phonons at small distances within the framework of the Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) and demonstrate that the transport is significantly affected by the distribution of phonons emitted by the source. We discuss analytical solutions of the steady-state BTE for a source with a sinusoidal spatial profile, as well as for a three- dimensional Gaussian hot spot, and provide numerical results for single crystal silicon at room temperature. If a micro/nanoscale heat source produces a thermal phonon distribution, it gets hotter than predicted by the heat …
Unusual features in the bias dependence of spin transport are observed in a Co/Au/NiFe spin valve fabricated on a highly textured Cu(100)/Si(100) Schottky interface, exploiting the local probing capabilities of a Ballistic electron magnetic microscope (BEMM). This arises due to local differences in the strain and the presence of misfit dislocations at the Schottky interface that enhances spin flip scattering and broadens the energy and angular distribution of the transmitted electrons. Cumulatively, these enable the transmitted hot electrons to probe the different conduction band minima in Si,…
Heating and heat conduction in molecular junctions are considered within a general NEGF formalism. We obtain a unified description of heating in current carrying molecular junctions as well as the electron and phonon contributions to the thermal flux, including their mutual influence. Ways to calculate these contributions, their relative importance and ambiguities in their definitions are discussed. A general expression for the phonon thermal flux is derived and used in a new "measuring technique", to define and quantify 'local temperature' in nonequilibrium systems. Superiority of this measur…
Cross-plane heat transport in thin films with thickness comparable to the phonon mean free paths is of both fundamental and practical interest. However, physical insight is difficult to obtain for the cross-plane geometry due to the challenge of solving the Boltzmann equation in a finite domain. Here, we present a semi-analytical series expansion method to solve the transient, frequency-dependent Boltzmann transport equation that is valid from the diffusive to ballistic transport regimes and rigorously includes frequency-dependence of phonon properties. Further, our method is more than three o…
Based on the phonon Boltzmann transport equation under the relaxation time approximation, analytical expressions for the temperature profiles of both steady state and modulated heat conduction inside a thin film deposited on a substrate are derived and analyzed. It is shown that both steady state and modulated components of the temperature depend strongly on the ratio between the film thickness and the average phonon mean free path, and they exhibit the diffusive behavior as predicted by the Fourier law of heat conduction when this ratio is much larger than the unity. In contrast, in the balli…
We explore ballistic regime quantum transport characteristics of oxide-embedded crossing and kinked silicon nanowires (NWs) within a large-scale empirical pseudopotential electronic structure framework, coupled to the Kubo-Greenwood transport analysis. A real-space wave function study is undertaken and the outcomes are interpreted together with the findings of ballistic transport calculations. This reveals that ballistic transport edge lies tens to hundreds of millielectron volts above the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital, with a substantial number of localized states appearing in between, …
We present an atomistic theory of electronic transport through single organic molecules that reproduces the important features of the current-voltage characteristics observed in recent experiments. We trace these features to their origin in the electronic structure of the molecules and their local atomic environment. We demonstrate how conduction channels arise from the molecular orbitals and elucidate which specific properties of the individual orbitals determine their contribution to the current.
While heating of a current carrying Ohmic conductors is an obvious consequence of the diffusive nature of the conduction in such systems, current induced cooling has been recently reported in some molecular conduction junctions. In this paper we demonstrate by simple models the possibility of cooling molecular junctions under applied bias, and discuss several mechanisms for such an effect. Our model is characterized by single electron tunneling between electrodes represented by free electron reservoirs through a system characterized by it electron levels, nuclear vibrations and their structure…
A thermal transport mechanism leading to the enhanced thermal conductivity of Graphene nanofluids has been proposed. The Graphene sheet size is postulated to be the key to the underlying mechanism. Based on a critical sheet size derived from Stokes-Einstein equation for the poly-dispersed nanofluid, sheet percolation and Brownian motion assisted sheet collisions are used to explain the heat conduction. A collision dependant dynamic conductivity considering Debye approximated volumetric specific heat due to phonon transport in Graphene has been incorporated. The model has been found to be in go…
We have investigated shot noise and conduction of graphene field effect nanoribbon devices at low temperature. By analyzing the exponential $I-V$ characteristics of our devices in the transport gap region, we found out that transport follows variable range hopping laws at intermediate bias voltages $1 < V_{bias} < 12$ mV. In parallel, we observe a strong shot noise suppression leading to very low Fano factors. The strong suppression of shot noise is consistent with inelastic hopping, in crossover from one- to two-dimensional regime, indicating that the localization length $l_{loc} < W$ in our …
Photons typically do not contribute to thermal transport within a solid due to their low energy density and tendency to be quickly absorbed. We propose a practical material system - infrared plasmonic resonators embedded in a semiconductor nanowire - that leverages near-field electromagnetic coupling to achieve photonic thermal transport comparable to the electronic and phononic contributions. We analytically show photonic thermal conductivities up to about 1 W m-1 K-1 for 10 nm diameter Si and InAs nanowires containing repeated resonators at 500 K. The nanowire system outperforms plasmonic pa…
Redox molecular junctions are molecular conduction junctions that involve more than one oxidation state of the molecular bridge. This property is derived from the ability of the molecule to transiently localize transmitting electrons, implying relatively weak molecule-leads coupling and, in many cases, the validity of the Marcus theory of electron transfer. Here we study the implications of this property on the non-linear transport properties of such junctions. We obtain an analytical solution of the integral equations that describe molecular conduction in the Marcus kinetic regime and use it …
Recently, there have been increasing interests in phonon thermal transport in low dimensional materials, due to the crucial importance for dissipating and managing heat in micro and nano electronic devices. Significant progresses have been achieved for one-dimensional (1D) systems both theoretically and experimentally. However, the study of heat conduction in two-dimensional (2D) systems is still in its infancy due to the limited availability of 2D materials and the technical challenges in fabricating suspended samples suitable for thermal measurements. In this review, we outline different exp…
Measurements of electron transfer rates as well as of charge transport characteristics in DNA produced a number of seemingly contradictory results, ranging from insulating behaviour to the suggestion that DNA is an efficient medium for charge transport. Among other factors, environmental effects appear to play a crucial role in determining the effectivity of charge propagation along the double helix. This chapter gives an overview over charge transfer theories and their implication for addressing the interaction of a molecular conductor with a dissipative environment. Further, we focus on poss…
With the goal to elucidate the nature of spin-dependent electronic transport in ferromagnetic atomic contacts, we present here a combined experimental and theoretical study of the conductance and shot noise of metallic atomic contacts made of the 3d ferromagnetic materials Fe, Co, and Ni. For comparison, we also present the corresponding results for the noble metal Cu. Conductance and shot noise measurements, performed using a low-temperature break junction setup, show that in these ferromagnetic nanowires: (i) there is no conductance quantization of any kind, (ii) transport is dominated by se…
For quantum ballistic transport of electrons through a short conduction channel, the role of Coulomb interaction may significantly modify the energy levels of an electron pair at low temperatures as the channel becomes wide. In this regime, the Coulomb effect on the orbital triplet and singlet electron-pair state is calculated and found to lead to four split energy levels, including two hybrid and two unhybrid states. Moreover, due to the interplay of hybrid and unhybrid Coulomb interactions between two electrons, our calculations reveal that the ground pair-state will switch from one hybrid o…
We propose a tight-binding model to investigate electronic transport properties of single helical protein molecules incorporating both the helical symmetry and the possibility of multiple charge transfer pathways. Our study reveals that due to existence of both the multiple charge transfer pathways and helical symmetry, the transport properties are quite rigid under influence of envi- ronmental fluctuations which indicates that these biomolecules can serve as better alternatives in nanoelectronic devices than its other biological counterparts e.g., single-stranded DNA.
Spin transport is crucial for future spintronic devices operating at bandwidths up to the terahertz (THz) range. In F|N thin-film stacks made of a ferro/ferrimagnetic layer F and a normal-metal layer N, spin transport is mediated by (1) spin-polarized conduction electrons and/or (2) torque between electron spins. To identify a cross-over from (1) to (2), we study laser-driven spin currents in F|Pt stacks where F consists of model materials with different degrees of electrical conductivity. For the magnetic insulators YIG, GIG and maghemite, identical dynamics is observed. It arises from the TH…
The electrical conductance of molecular junctions may strongly depend on the temperature, and weakly on molecular length, under two distinct mechanisms: phase-coherent resonant conduction, with charges proceeding via delocalized molecular orbitals, and incoherent thermally-assisted multi-step hopping. While in the case of coherent conduction the temperature dependence arises from the broadening of the Fermi distribution in the metal electrodes, in the latter case it corresponds to electron-vibration interaction effects on the junction. With the objective to distill the thermally-activated hopp…
We report the composition and gate voltage induced tuning of transport properties in chemically synthesized Bi2(Te1-xSex)3 nanoribbons. It is found that increasing Se concentration effectively suppresses the bulk carrier transport and induces semiconducting behavior in the temperature dependent resistance of Bi2(Te1-xSex)3 nanoribbons when x is greater than ~10%. In Bi2(Te1-xSex)3 nanoribbons with x ~20%, gate voltage enables ambipolar modulation of resistance (or conductance) in samples with thickness around or larger than 100nm, indicating significantly enhanced contribution in transport fro…
We present a complex set of transport spectroscopy data on a clean single-wall carbon nanotube device in high magnetic fields. At zero axial field, the device displays in hole conduction with increasingly negative gate voltage a fast transition towards high contact transparency and eventually Fabry-Perot interference of conductance. When increasing the axial field component up to B=17T, the contact transparency and the overall conductance are reduced all the way to Coulomb blockade, clearly displaying the subsequent charging with the first 10 holes. The continuous transition between the transp…
We investigate quantum transport characteristics of a ladder model, which effectively mimics the topology of a double-stranded DNA molecule. We consider the interaction of tunneling charges with a selected internal vibrational degree of freedom and discuss its influence on the structure of the current-voltage characteristics. Further, molecule-electrode contact effects are shown to dramatically affect the orders of magnitude of the current. Recent electrical transport measurements on suspended DNA oligomers with a complex base-pair sequence, revealing strikingly high currents, are also present…
We investigate the effects of finite temperature, dc pulse, and ac drives on the charge transport in metallic arrays using numerical simulations. For finite temperatures there is a finite conduction threshold which decreases linearly with temperature. Additionally we find a quadratic scaling of the current-voltage curves which is independent of temperature for finite thresholds. These results are in excellent agreement with recent experiments on 2D metallic dot arrays. We have also investigated the effects of an ac drive as well as a suddenly applied dc drive. With an ac drive the conduction t…
Materials that possess low density, low thermal conductivity, and high stiffness are desirable for engineering applications, but most materials cannot realize these properties simultaneously due to the coupling between them. Nanotrusses, which consist of hollow nanoscale beams architected into a periodic truss structure, can potentially break these couplings due to their lattice architecture and nanoscale features. In this work, we study heat conduction in the exact nanotruss geometry by solving the frequency-dependent Boltzmann transport equation using a variance-reduced Monte Carlo algorithm…
We show how the two-dimensional (2D) topological insulator evolves, by stacking, into a strong or weak topological insulator with different topological indices, proposing a new conjecture that goes beyond an intuitive picture of the crossover from quantum spin Hall to the weak topological insulator. Studying the conductance under different boundary conditions, we demonstrate the existence of two conduction regimes in which conduction happens through either surface- or edge-conduction channels. We show that the two conduction regimes are complementary and exclusive. Conductance maps in the pres…
We report electrical transport measurements on individual disordered carbon nanotubes, grown catalytically in a nanoporous anodic aluminum oxide template. In both as-grown and annealed types of nanotubes, the low-field conductance shows as exp[-(T_{0}/T)^{1/2}] dependence on temperature T, suggesting that hopping conduction is the dominant transport mechanism, albeit with different disorder-related coefficients T_{0}. The field dependence of low-temperature conductance behaves an exp[-(xi_{0}/xi)^{1/2}] with high electric field xi at sufficiently low T. Finally, both annealed and unannealed na…
Strongly interacting electrons can move in a neatly coordinated way, reminiscent of the movement of viscous fluids. Here we show that in viscous flows interactions facilitate transport, allowing conductance to exceed the fundamental Landauer's ballistic limit $G_{\rm ball}$. The effect is particularly striking for the flow through a viscous point contact, a constriction exhibiting the quantum-mechanical ballistic transport at $T=0$ but governed by electron hydrodynamics at elevated temperatures. We develop a theory of the ballistic-to-viscous crossover using an approach based on quasi-hydrodyn…
The temperature dependence of the electrical transport of a individual tin oxide nanobelt was measured, in darkness, from 400 to 5K. We found four intrinsic electrical transport mechanisms through the nanobelt. It starts with Thermal-Activation Conduction between 400 and 314K, Nearest-Neighbor Hopping conduction between 268 and 115K, and Variable Range Hopping conduction below 58K, with a crossover from the 3D-Mott to the 3D-Efros-Shklovskii regime at 16K. We claim that this sequence reveal the three-dimensional nature of the electrical transport in the SnO2 nanobelts, even they are expected t…
Quantum fluctuations are imprinted with valuable information about transport processes. Experimental access to this information is possible, but challenging. We introduce the dynamical Coulomb blockade (DCB) as a local probe for fluctuations in a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) and show that it provides information about the conduction channels. In agreement with theoretical predictions, we find that the DCB disappears in a single-channel junction with increasing transmission following the Fano factor, analogous to what happens with shot noise. Furthermore we demonstrate local differences …
We report on the synthesis, scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and theoretical modeling of the electrostatic and transport properties of one-dimensional organic heterostructures consisting of contiguous lines of CF3- and OCH3-substituted styrene molecules on silicon. The electrostatic fields emanating from these polar molecules are found, under appropriate conditions, to strongly influence electrical conduction through nearby molecules and the underlying substrate. For suitable alignment of the OCH3 groups of the OCH3-styrene molecules in the molecular chain, their combined electric fields ar…
We investigate the effects of uniaxial strain on the transport properties of vertical devices made of two twisted graphene layers, which partially overlap each other. We find that because of the different orientations of the two graphene lattices, their Dirac points can be displaced and separated in the $k-$space by the effects of strain. Hence, a finite conduction gap as large as a few hundred meV can be obtained in the device with a small strain of only a few percent. The dependence of this conduction gap on the strain strength, strain direction, transport direction and twist angle are clari…
The Boltzmann transport equation for phonons is recast directly in terms of the heat-flux by means of iteration followed by truncation at the second order in the spherical harmonic expansion of the distribution function. This procedure displays the heat-flux in an explicitly coordinate-invariant form, and leads to a natural decomposition into two components, namely the solenoidal component in addition to the usual irrotational component. The solenoidal heat-flux is explicitly shown to arise by applying the heat-flux equation to a right-circular cylinder. These findings are important in the con…
While using first-principles-based Boltzmann transport equation approach to predict the thermal conductivity of crystalline semiconductor materials has been a routine, the validity of the approach is seldom tested for high-temperature conditions. Most previous studies only focused on the phononic contribution, and neglected the electronic part. Meanwhile, the treatment on phonon transport is not rigorous as a few ingredients, such as four-phonon scatterings, phonon renormalization and thermal expansion, are ignored. In this paper, we present a Boltzmann transport equation study on high-tempera…
The thermal conductance of straight and corrugated monocrystalline silicon nanowires has been measured between 0.3 K and 5 K. The difference in the thermal transport between corrugated nanowires and straight ones demonstrates a strong reduction in the mean free path of the phonons. This averaged mean free path is remarkably smaller than the smaller diameter of the nanowire, evidencing a phonon thermal transport reduced below the Casimir limit. Monte Carlo simulations highlight that this effect can be attributed to significant multiple scattering of ballistic phonons occuring on the corrugated …
We present a rigorous and computationally efficient method to do a parameter-free analysis of molecular wires connected to contacts. The self-consistent field approach is coupled with Non-equilibrium Green's Function (NEGF) formalism to describe electronic transport under an applied bias. Standard quantum chemistry software is used to calculate the self-consistent field using density functional theory (DFT). Such close coupling to standard quantum chemistry software not only makes the procedure simple to implement but also makes the relation between the I-V characteristics and the chemistry of…
Tunnel transport processes are considered in a square lattice of metallic nanogranules embedded into insulating host to model tunnel conduction in real metal/insulator granular layers. Based on a simple model with three possible charging states ($\pm$, or 0) of a granule and three kinetic processes (creation or recombination of a $\pm$ pair, and charge transfer) between neighbor granules, the mean-field kinetic theory is developed. It describes the interplay between charging energy and temperature and between the applied electric field and the Coulomb fields by the non-compensated charge densi…
Transient grating (TG) spectroscopy is an important experimental technique to measure mean free path (MFP) spectra using observations of quasiballistic heat conduction. To obtain MFP spectra, the measurements must be interpreted within the framework of the frequency-dependent Boltzmann transport equation (BTE), but previous solutions have restricted validity due to simplifying assumptions. Here, we analyze heat conduction in TG using a new analytical solution of the frequency-dependent BTE that accurately describes thermal transport from the diffusive to ballistic regimes. We demonstrate that …
In two-dimensional (2D) electron systems, an off-resonant high-frequency circularly polarized electromagnetic field can induce the quasi-stationary bound electron states of repulsive scatterers. As a consequence, the resonant scattering of conduction electrons through the quasi-stationary states and the capture of conduction electrons by the states appear. The present theory describes the transport properties of 2D electron gas irradiated by a circularly polarized light, which are modified by these processes. Particularly, it is demonstrated that irradiation of 2D electron systems by the off-r…
The Rashba Hamiltonian describes the splitting of the conduction band as a result of spin-orbit coupling in the presence of an external field and is commonly used to model the electronic structure of confined narrow-gap semiconductors. Due to the mixing of spin states some care has to be exercised in the calculation of transport properties. We derive the velocity operator for the Rashba-split conduction band and demonstrate that the transmission of an interface between a ferromagnet and a Rashba-split semiconductor does not depend on the magnetization direction, in contrast with previous asser…
The well-established symmetry relations for linear transport phenomena can not, in general, be applied in the non-linear regime. Here we propose a set of symmetry relations with respect to bias voltage and magnetic field for the non-linear conductance of two-terminal electric conductors. We experimentally confirm these relations using phase-coherent, semiconductor quantum dots.
We develop a computational framework, based on the Boltzmann transport equation, with the ability to compute the thermal transport in nanostructured materials of any geometry using as the only input the bulk thermal conductivity accumulation function. The main advantage of our method is twofold. First, while the scattering times and dispersion curves are unknown for most materials, the phonon mean free path distribution can be directly obtained by experiments. As a consequence, a wider range of materials can be simulated than with a frequency-dependent approach. Second, when phonon dispersions…
We study the dynamics of impurity bound electrons interacting with a bath of conduction band electrons in a semiconductor. Only the exchange interaction is considered. We derive master equations for the density matrices of single and two qubit systems under the usual Born and Markov approximations. The bath mediated RKKY interaction in the two qubit case arises naturally. It leads to an energy shift significant only when the ratio ($R_{T}$) of the inter-qubit distance to the thermal deBroglie wavelength of the bath electrons is small. This bath mediated interaction also has a profound impact o…
We present a model supported by simulation to explain the effect of temperature on the conduction threshold in disordered systems. Arrays with randomly distributed local thresholds for conduction occur in systems ranging from superconductors to metal nanocrystal arrays. Thermal fluctuations provide the energy to overcome some of the local thresholds, effectively erasing them as far as the global conduction threshold for the array is concerned. We augment this thermal energy reasoning with percolation theory to predict the temperature at which the global threshold reaches zero. We also study th…
We propose to use l_0/(l_0+L) for the energy transmission covering both ballistic and diffusive regimes, where l_0 is mean free path and L is system length. This formula is applied to heat conduction in carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Calculations of thermal conduction show: (1) Thermal conductance at room temperature is proportional to the diameter of CNTs for single-walled CNTs (SWCNTs) and to the square of diameter for multi-walled CNTs (MWCNTs). (2) Interfaces play an important role in thermal conduction in CNTs due to the symmetry of CNTs vibrational modes. (3) When the phonon mean free path is …
Nanoconfinement induces many intriguing non-Fourier heat conduction phenomena that have been extensively studied in recent years, such as the nonlinear temperature profile inside the devices, the temperature jumps near the contacts, and the finite-size effects. The understanding of these phenomena, however, has been a matter of debate over the past two decades. In this work, we demonstrate a unified phonon interpretation of non-Fourier heat conduction which can help to understand these phenomena by a mode-to-mode correspondence between the non-equilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) simulations …
We present a fast and stable numerical technique to obtain the self-energy terms of electrodes for first-principles electron-transport calculations. Although first-principles calculations based on the real-space finite-difference method are advantageous for execution on massively parallel computers, large-scale transport calculations are hampered by the computational cost and numerical instability of the computation of the self-energy terms. Using the orthogonal complement vectors of the space spanned by the generalized Bloch waves that actually contribute to transport phenomena, the computati…
We report a systematic study of the transport properties of coupled one-dimensional metallic chains as a function of the number of parallel chains. When the number of parallel chains is less than 2000, the transport properties show power-law behavior on temperature and voltage, characteristic for one-dimensional systems.
We have determined the transmission coefficients of atomic-sized Zn contacts using a new type of breakjunction which contains a whisker as a central bridge. We find that in the last conductance plateau the transport is unexpectedly dominated by a well-transmitting single conduction channel. We explain the experimental findings with the help of a tight-binding model which shows that in an one-atom Zn contact the current proceeds through the 4s and 4p orbitals of the central atom.
Heat transfer between two surfaces separated by a nanometre gap is important for a number of applications ranging from spaced head disk systems, scanning thermal microscopy and thermal transport in aerogels. At these separation distances, near field radiative heat transfer competes with heat transfer mediated by phonons. Here we quantify the contribution of phonon assisted heat transfer between apolar solids using lattice dynamics combined with ab-initio calculations. We clearly demonstrate that phonons dominate heat transfer for subnanometre gaps. Strikingly, we conclude that even in the situ…
Indium tin oxide (Sn-doped In$_2$O$_{3-δ}$ or ITO) is an interesting and technologically important transparent conducting oxide. This class of material has been extensively studied for decades, with research efforts focusing on the application aspects. The fundamental issues of the electronic conduction properties of ITO from 300 K down to low temperatures have rarely been addressed. Studies of the electrical-transport properties over a wide range of temperature are essential to unraveling the underlying electronic dynamics and microscopic electronic parameters. We show that one can learn rich…
Departures in phonon heat conduction from diffusion have been extensively observed in nanostructures through their thermal conductivity reduction and largely explained with classical size effects neglecting phonon's wave nature. Here, we report localization-behavior in phonon heat conduction due to multiple scattering and interference of phonon waves, observed through measurements of the thermal conductivities of GaAs/AlAs superlattices with ErAs nanodots randomly distributed at the interfaces. Near room temperature, the measured thermal conductivities increased with increasing number of SL pe…