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Enhancement of the thermoelectric figure-of-merit in nanowire superlattices

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Abstract

Based on the Kubo-Greenwood formula, the thermoelectric effects in periodically and quasiperiodically segmented nanowires are studied by means of a real-space renormalization plus convolution method, where the electrical and lattice thermal conductivities are respectively calculated by using the tight-binding and Born models; the latter includes central and non-central interactions between nearest-neighbor atoms. The results show a significant enhancement of the thermoelectric figure-of-merit (ZT) induced by the structural disorder and/or the reduction of nanowire cross-section area. In addition, we observe a maximum ZT in both the chemical-potential and temperature spaces.

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Acknowledgments

This work has been partially supported by CONACyT-131596, UNAM-IN113813 and UNAM-IN113714. Computations were performed at Miztli of DGTIC-UNAM.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Investigaciones en Materiales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, D.F., México

    Chumin Wang & J. Eduardo González

  2. Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, D.F., México

    Vicenta Sánchez

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  1. Chumin Wang
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  2. J. Eduardo González
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  3. Vicenta Sánchez
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Wang, C., González, J.E. & Sánchez, V. Enhancement of the thermoelectric figure-of-merit in nanowire superlattices. MRS Online Proceedings Library 1735, 123–129 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1557/opl.2015.307

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/opl.2015.307

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