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Access Type
Open Access
Document Type
thesis
Degree Program
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Degree Type
Master of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering (M.S.E.C.E.)
Year Degree Awarded
2008
Month Degree Awarded
September
Keywords
Accessible information, quantum-transport, microcanonical
Abstract
In this work, we expand the scope of the present implications of the tight-binding microcanonical picture of electron transport, which is proposed by Di Ventra and co-workers as an alternative to the Landauer’s static scattering approach. We investigate the structure dependence of current flow in electrode-conductor-electrode systems and calculate the local occupation functions and time-dependent conductor current for various conductor lengths and electrode configurations. We also explore fundamental physical limits to the encoding of information in the nanoscale conductor by application of electrode bias in a model system. Using the microcanonical description of a nanoconductor, composed of linear chain of atoms, bridging two electrodes, we obtain upper bounds on the accessible information in the conductor as a function of electrode bias, when the current flow is governed by the conductance quantum.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/557843
First Advisor
Neal G Anderson