A nonlinear transport device with no intrinsic threshold

Abstract

A ballistic rectifier, based on guidance of carriers by a triangular antidot, is shown to be both experimentally and theoretically capable of operating for weak signals. At T = 4.2 K, we find that the ballistic rectifier works when the input voltage is as low as 0.5 mV, the same order ofkBT. Based on an extended Landauer–Büttiker formula for nonlinear transport, we show that even when the input signal is much smaller thankBT, temperature has no obvious influence on the rectification effect.