Related papers: Concept study for a high-efficiency nanowire-based…
The thermalization of non-equilibrium charge carriers is at the heart of thermoelectric energy conversion. In nanoscale systems, the equilibration length can be on the order of the system size, leading to a situation where thermoelectric…
Continuous particle exchange thermal machines require no time-dependent driving, can be realised in solid-state electronic devices, and miniaturised to nanometre scale. Quantum dots, providing a narrow energy filter and allowing to…
We find that a novel Superconductor-Insulator-2D electron gas tunnel junction (SISm) strongly and efficiently generates thermoelectricity via a nonlinear mechanism. We simulate across the parameter space of the junction, finding and…
In the current paper a set of experiments dedicated to investigations of local electronic transport in undoped InAs nanowires at helium temperatures in the presence of a charged atomic-force microscope tip is presented. Both nanowires…
We study the maximum efficiency of a Carnot cycle heat engine based on a small system. It is revealed that due to the finiteness of the system, irreversibility may arise when the working substance contacts with a heat bath. As a result,…
Recent advances in the synthesis of inorganic and organic nanowires and nanotubes have provided both components for various functional devices and platforms for the study of low- dimensional transport phenomena. However, tremendous…
Thermoelectric materials convert heat into electricity through thermally driven charge transport in solids, or vice versa for cooling. To be competitive with conventional energy-generation technologies, a thermoelectric material must…
We identify the operational conditions for maximum power of a nanothermoelectric engine consisting of a single quantum level embedded between two leads at different temperatures and chemical potentials. The corresponding thermodynamic…
Carnot efficiency sets a fundamental upper bound on the heat engine efficiency, attainable in the quasi-static limit, albeit at the cost of completely sacrificing power output. In this Letter, we present a minimal heat engine model that can…
It was recently suggested that molecular junctions would be excellent elements for efficient and high-power thermoelectric energy conversion devices. However, experimental measurements of thermoelectric conversion in molecular junctions…
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…
The bottleneck in modern thermoelectric power generation and cooling is the low energy conversion efficiency of thermoelectric materials. The detrimental effects of lattice phonons on performance can be mitigated, but achieving a high…
We study thermoelectric properties of inhomogeneous nanogranular materials for weak tunneling conductance between the grains, g_t < 1. We calculate the thermopower and figure of merit taking into account the shift of the chemical potential…
We propose a possible route to achieve high thermoelectric efficiency in molecular junctions by combining a local chemical tuning of the molecular electronic states with the use of semiconducting electrodes. The former allows to control the…
Tellurium (Te) is an intrinsically p-type doped narrow bandgap semiconductor with excellent electrical conductivity and low thermal conductivity. Bulk trigonal Te has been theoretically predicted and experimentally demonstrated to be an…
Nanoribbons - nanometer wide strips of a two-dimensional material - are a unique system in condensed matter physics. They combine the exotic electronic structures of low-dimensional materials with an enhanced number of exposed edges, where…
Superconducting nanowires are the dual elements to Josephson junctions, with quantum phase-slip processes replacing the tunneling of Cooper pairs. When the quantum phase-slip amplitude ES is much smaller than the inductive energy EL, the…
Thermoelectric films and periodic structures have particularly intriguing electrical and thermal transport features due to their low dimensionality. As a result, they have piqued the attention of researchers from across the spectrum of…
Following the result by Skrzypczyk et al., arXiv:1009.0865, that certain self-contained quantum thermal machines can reach Carnot efficiency, we discuss the functioning of self-contained quantum thermal machines and show, in a very general…
The separation of hot carriers in semiconductors is of interest for applications such as thermovoltaic photodetection and third-generation photovoltaics. Semiconductor nanowires offer several potential advantages for effective hot-carrier…