Electric metamaterial
Contents
Playing pinball with electron waves
One could maybe design special electron conduction properties by nano-pattering a suitable conductive base material.
- cutting voids
- insetting isolators or semiconductors, ...
In such a case when ballistic electron transport is desired rather than undesired,
a problem is that Electrons not only scatter on crystal faults but
also on phonons that are present even in perfect crystals.
The bigger the slabs of metamaterial the more this will become a problem.
Material choice may have some influence on electron-phonon scattering but
the obvious approach is cooling down to cryogenic temperatures.
Designing specific desired electron wave scatter behaviours by tailoring the metamaterials internal geometries is an inverse and therefore quite difficult and computation intense problem. This is not one of the problems that can be back on the napkin estimated and eyeballed. It often needs needs quantum mechanical simulations. Much unlike many simple estimations that are possible for mechanical metamaterials.
All this is not to confuse with electromagnetic metamaterials.
Not much metamaterial for electrons that behave as we are used to
Getting electrons to move more classically,
e.g. by shaping wire corners such that electrons are not obstructed by ballistic reflection
reduces conductive structures to simple electrical circuits (2D or 3D).
Electric circuits are usually not counted as metamaterials.
Well one may or may not count electric circuits with repeating cells as metamaterial like:
- data memory cells
- electrostatic motors cells electromechanical metamaterial
(These do not react on external global influences).
(wiki-TODO: more to think here …)
Getting electric currents behaving as we are used to
Behaving ballistically in atomically precise (sub)nano-wires
electrons might have trouble going around corners.
The might prefer to just reflect back to where they came from.
In atomically precise (sub)nanostructures there is ballistic electron transport.
This may complicate wiring due to unwanted reflections for very thin atomically precise wires that go around tight corners.
(wiki-TODO: how do cutting edge chips deal with the problem of ballistic electron transport? are 2nm still big enough for that to not matter too much ? and or the manufacturing inaccuracies chaotic enough?!)
(wiki-TODO: move this to an other page - nanoelectronics?)
Related
- Electromagnetic metamaterial
- Thermal metamaterial
- Mechanical metamaterial
- Non mechanical technology path
- Slightly off-topic: Quasiparticles
External links
Wikipedia:
- Electromigration
- phonon-electron scattering? [1]
