Related papers: A new comparison between solid-state thermionics a…
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…
We investigate thermopower and thermoelectric coefficient of nano-granular materials at large tunneling conductance between the grains, g_{T} >> 1. We show that at intermediate temperatures, T >= g_{T}\delta, where \delta is the mean energy…
The charge transport mechanism and the macroscopic dielectric constant in polycrystalline device materials commonly exhibit several components such as electrode-sample interface, grain boundary and bulk contributions. In order to gain…
The quest for good thermoelectric materials and/or high-efficiency thermoelectric devices is of primary importance from theoretical and practical points of view. Low-dimensional structures with quantum dots or molecules are promising…
Extended from its electromagnetic counterpart, transformation thermodynamics applied to thermal conduction equations can map a virtual geometry into a physical thermal medium, realizing the manipulation of heat flux with almost arbitrarily…
Using the gauge-gravity duality, we argue that for a certain class of out-of-equilibrium steady-state systems in contact with a thermal background at a given temperature, the macroscopic physics can be captured by an effective thermodynamic…
We examine the efficiency of an effective two-terminal thermoelectric device under broken time-reversal symmetry. The setup is derived from a three-terminal thermoelectric device comprising a thermal terminal and two electronic contacts,…
Efficient thermoelectric materials are highly desirable, and the quest for finding them has intensified as they could be promising alternatives to fossil energy sources. Here we present a general first-principles approach to predict, in…
Recently, we have presented some simple arguments supporting the existence of certain complementarity between thermodynamic quantities of temperature and energy, an idea suggested by Bohr and Heinsenberg in the early days of Quantum…
We have applied the non-extensive statistical mechanics to free electrons in several metals to calculate the electronic specific heat at low temperature. In this case, the Fermi-Dirac (FD) function is modified from its Boltzmann-Gibbs (BG)…
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…
We propose here a feasible and effective design of new thermoelectric systems based on physical gaps in nanoscale junctions. We show that, depending on the type of features, i.e. the character of surface/edge states, on both sides of the…
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…
We discuss several general aspects of the free energy of the standard model at high temperatures. In particular the Clausius-Clapeyron equation is shown to yield a relation between the latent heat and the jump in the order parameter. The…
Magnetic fusion devices operate at regimes characterized by extremely high temperatures and low densities, for which the charged particles motion is well described by classical mechanics. This is not true, however, for solid-state metallic…
When the surface of a first material is brought into contact with the surface of a second material the contact region is called an interface. Since the time of James Clerk Maxwell it has been customary to treat a material electrically as…
Situations where a spontaneous process of energy or matter transfer is enhanced by an external device are widespread in nature (human sweating system, enzyme catalysis, facilitated diffusion across bio-membranes, industrial heat…
Thermionic converters generate electricity from thermal energy in a power cycle based on vacuum emission of electrons. While thermodynamically efficient, practical implementations are limited by the extreme temperatures required for…
Jarzynski Equality (JE) and the thermodynamic integration method are conventional methods to calculate free energy difference (FED) between two equilibrium states with constant temperature of a system. However, a number of ensemble samples…
Topological Insulators are the best thermoelectric materials involving a sophisticated physics beyond their solid state and electronic structure. We show that exists a topological contribution to the thermoelectric effect that arise between…