Using polymer electrolyte gates to set-and-freeze threshold voltage and local potential in nanowire-based devices and thermoelectrics

摘要

© 2014 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA. The strongly temperature-dependent ionic mobility in polymer electrolytes is used to "freeze in" specific ionic charge environments around a nanowire using a local wrap-gate geometry. This makes it possible to set both the threshold voltage for a conventional doped substrate gate and the local disorder potential at temperatures below 220 K. These are characterized in detail by combining conductance and thermovoltage measurements with modeling. The results demonstrate that local polymer electrolyte gates are compatible with nanowire thermoelectrics, where they offer the advantage of a very low thermal conductivity, and hold great potential towards setting the optimal operating point for solid-state cooling applications.