Highly enhanced thermopower in two-dimensional electron systems at millikelvin temperatures

Phys Rev Lett. 2009 Jul 10;103(2):026602. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.026602. Epub 2009 Jul 6.

Abstract

We report experimental observation of an unexpectedly large thermopower in mesoscopic two-dimensional (2D) electron systems in GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures at sub-Kelvin temperatures and zero magnetic field. Unlike conventional nonmagnetic high-mobility 2D systems, the thermopower in our devices increases with decreasing temperature below 0.3 K, reaching values in excess of 100 microV/K, thus exceeding the free electron estimate by more than 2 orders of magnitude. With support from a parallel study of the local density of states, we suggest such a phenomenon to be linked to intrinsic localized states and many-body spin correlations in the system.