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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2015

Chumin Wang
Affiliation:
Instituto de Investigaciones en Materiales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, D.F., México
J. Eduardo González
Affiliation:
Instituto de Investigaciones en Materiales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, D.F., México
Vicenta Sánchez
Affiliation:
Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, D.F., México
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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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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2015 

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References

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