Transistor Breaks Law of Thermal Conductivity

Good conductors of heat are usually also good conductors of electricity. That’s according to the Wiedemann-Franz law, which states that at a given temperature, the thermal conductivity of a metal is proportional to its electrical conductivity. But researchers have found that the law doesn’t hold for certain materials, such as metallic vanadium dioxide. Bivas Dutta from Grenoble Alpes University in France, Joonas Peltonen from Aalto University in Finland, and colleagues now demonstrate that single-electron transistors also violate the law. These transistors form the basis of nanoscale electronic circuitry, so the finding might be useful for managing and harvesting the heat generated in such circuitry.