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Carrier Pocket Engineering to Design Superior Thermoelectric Materials Using GaAs/AlAs Superlattices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2011

T. Koga ,
X. Sun ,
S. B. Cronin  and
M. S. Dresselhaus
T. Koga
Affiliation:
Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
X. Sun
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Cambridge, MA 02139
S. B. Cronin
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Cambridge, MA 02139
M. S. Dresselhaus
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Cambridge, MA 02139 Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139
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Abstract

A large enhancement in the thermoelectric figure of merit for the whole superlattice, Z3DT, is predicted for short period GaAs/AlAs superlattices relative to bulk GaAs. Various superlattice parameters (superlattice growth direction, superlattice period and layer thicknesses) are explored to optimize Z3DT, including quantum wells formed at various high symmetry points in the Brillouin zone. The highest room temperature Z3DT obtained in the present calculation is 0.41 at the optimum carrier concentration for either (001) or (111) oriented GaAs(20 Å)/AIAs(20 Å) superlattices, which is about 50 times greater than the corresponding ZT for bulk GaAs obtained using the same basic model.

Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 545: Symposium Z – Thermoelectric Materials 1998 - The Next Generation… , 1998 , 375
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1999

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