Related papers: Nanowires: A route to efficient thermoelectric dev…

Embedding nanostructures within a bulk matrix is an important practical approach towards the electronic engineering of high performance thermoelectric systems. For power generation applications, it ideally combines the efficiency benefit…

Irreversible effects in thermoelectric materials limit their efficiency and economy for applications in power generation and refrigeration. While electron transport is unavoidably irreversible in bulk materials, here we derive conditions…

Which sizes of nanoparticles embedded in a crystalline solid yield the lowest thermal conductivity? Nanoparticles have long been demonstrated to reduce the thermal conductivity of crystals by scattering phonons, but most previous works…

Thermoelectricity is the direct conversion of temperature gradient to electric voltage, and vice-versa. There are several potential applications of thermoelectricity, ranging from clean noiseless cooling, to waste-power harvesting in…

Hot Carrier solar cells have long been recognized as an attractive contender in the search for high efficiency photovoltaic devices but their fabrication requires solution of two important material challenges: finding materials with…

In this paper we review the theory of silicon nanowires. We focus on nanowires with diameters below 10 nm, where quantum effects become important and the properties diverge significantly from those of bulk silicon. These wires can be…

By using non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations, we demonstrated that thermal conductivity of Germanium nanowires can be reduced more than 25% at room temperature by atomistic coating. There is a critical coating thickness beyond…

Hierarchically nanostructured materials, where disorder is introduced in various length scales (at the atomic scale, the nanoscale, and the mesoscale) is one of the most promising directions to achieve extremely low thermal conductivities…

Controlling thermal transport is important for a range of devices and technologies, from phase change memories to next-generation electronics. This is especially true in nano-scale devices where thermal transport is altered by the influence…

Heat dissipation is one of the most serious problems in modern integrated electronics with the continuously decreasing devices size. Large portion of the consumed power is inevitably dissipated in the form of waste heat which not only…

The thermoelectric efficiency of semiconductors is usually considered in the ohmic electronic transport regime, which is achieved through high doping. Here we consider the opposite regime of low doping where the current-voltage…

Photons and electrons transmit information to form complex systems and networks. Phonons on the other hand, the quanta of mechanical motion, are often considered only as carriers of thermal energy. Nonetheless, their flow can also be molded…

Thermoelectric materials, which can convert waste heat into electricity or act as solid-state Peltier coolers, are emerging as key technologies to address global energy shortages and environmental sustainability. However, discovering…

Thermionics and thermophotovoltaics are solid-state technologies that convert high-temperature heat into electricity by utilizing fundamental particles, electrons in thermionics and photons in thermophotovoltaics, as energy carriers. Both…

Understanding thermal transport from nanoscale heat sources is important for a fundamental description of energy flow in materials, as well as for many technological applications including thermal management in nanoelectronics,…

We perform molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the reduction of the thermal conductivity by kinks in silicon nanowires. The reduction percentage can be as high as 70% at room temperature. The temperature dependence of the…

Achieving low thermal conductivity and good electrical properties is a crucial condition for thermal energy harvesting materials. Nanostructuring offers a very powerful tool to address both requirements: in nanostructured materials,…

Nanofluids are suspensions of nanoparticles and fibers which have recently attracted much attention due to their superior thermal properties. Here, nanofluids are studied in the sense of nanofins transversally attached to a surface, so that…

The electrical conductivity of a macroscopic assembly of nanomaterials is determined through a complex interplay of electronic transport within and between constituent nano-objects. Phonons play dual roles in this situation: their increased…

We compute atomistically the heat conductance for ultra-thin pristine silicon nanowires (SiNWs) with diameters ranging from 1 to 5 nm. The room temperature thermal conductance is found to be highly anisotropic: wires oriented along the…