Recently, new quantum features have been studied in the area of ridged quantum wells (RQW). Periodic ridges on the surface of the quantum well layer impose additional boundary conditions on the electron wave function and reduce the quantum state density. Electrons, rejected from forbidden quantum states, have to occupy the states with higher energy. As a result, Fermi energy in RQW increases and work function (WF) decreases. We investigate low WF electrode, com-posed from a metal RQW layer and a base substrate. The substrate material was selected so that electrons were confined to the RQW. The WF value depends on ridge geometry and electron confinement. We calculate WF in the metal RQW films grown both on a semiconductor and metal substrates. In the case of semiconductor substrate, wide band gap materials are preferable as they allow more reduction in RQW work function. In the case of metal substrate, low Fermi energy materials are preferable. For most material pairs, the WF was reduced dramatically. Such structures, can serve as electrodes for room temperature thermionic and thermotunnel energy converters and coolers.
Nanostructured Zinc oxide (ZnO) was synthesized via a ball milling for 10 hours using high energy planetary ball mill. Phase purity and homogeneity of all the samples have been investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FE-SEM). All the diffraction peaks can be indexed to the hexagonal phase ZnO with hexagonal symmetry (space group P63mc). Average crystallite size was observed to be 20 nm. There was a remarkable suppression in thermal conductivity (κ) compared to the bulk values by a factor of ~50 at room temperature. This suggests to the possibili…
A composite material is considered which consists of conducting nanoparticles separated by tunneling dielectric barriers. The influence of the phonon thermal conductivity of dielectric matrix on the thermoelectric figure of merit of this composite material is theoretically in-vestigated. The range of values and barrier parameters that can lead to the thermoelectric figure of merit greater than unity is estimated. The influence of space charge and nonlinearity of current-voltage relations of tunneling barrier are also discussed.
We present a comprehensive analysis of a dual, micro-gap thermionic-thermoelectric hybrid energy converter by developing a detailed theoretical model of the system. The Space-charge and near-field effects in thermionic conversion and the temperature-dependent effects in thermoelectric conversion are considered while studying the energy flow through the cascade system. The temperatures and energy exchange channels in the different parts of the system are quantified with a self-consistent iterative algorithm considering the energy balance condition. The model is deployed to simulate the hybrid s…
We propose a concentrated thermionic emission solar cell design, which demonstrates a high solar-to-electricity energy conversion efficiency larger than 10\% under 600 sun, by harnessing the exceptional electrical, thermal and radiative properties of the graphene as a collector electrode. By constructing an analytical model that explicitly takes into account the non-Richardson behavior of the thermionic emission current from graphene, space charge effect in vacuum gap, and the various irreversible energy losses within the subcomponents, we perform a detailed characterization on the conversion …
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 electron emission (> 1500 K). Here, we show how metal nanostructures that support resonant plasmonic absorption enable an alternative strategy. High electronic temperatures required for efficient vacuum emission can be maintained during steady-state optical absorption while the lattice temperature remains within the range of thermal stability, below 600 K. We have …
The thermoelectric voltage of a quantum dot connected to leads is calculated using the scattering R-matrix method. Our approach takes into account a temperature gradient between the contacts beyond the linear regime. We obtain sign changes of the thermopower when varying the temperature or the chemical potential around the resonances. The influence of the coupling strength of the contacts and of the thermoelectric field on the thermoelectric voltage is discussed.
In this paper, we propose van del Waals heterostructure-based thermionic devices for the applications in cooling and power generation in the temperature range of 300 to 400 K. By using two-dimensional materials of low cross-plane thermal conductivity as the barrier materials and graphene as electrodes, our calculation demonstrates that our proposed device will have a higher efficiency as compared to other methods such as thermoelectric device and the traditional thermionic devices. By using the parameters within the current technology, we predict a cooling capability at more than 50$\%$ of the…
A nanostructured thermoelectric device is designed by connecting a double-barrier resonant tunneling heterostructure to two electron reservoirs. Based on Landauers equation and Fermi-Dirac statistics, the exact solution of the heat flow is calculated. The maximum power output and efficiency are calculated through the optimizations of several key parameters. The optimum characteristic curve of the performance is obtained. The reasonably working region of the device is determined, the selection criteria of main parameters are provided, and the optimum configuration of the device is drawn. Result…
We investigate the electric and thermoelectric transport coefficients of nanocomposites using the Non-Equilibrium Greens Function (NEGF) method, which can accurately capture the details of geometry and disorder in these structures. We consider here two dimensional (2D) channels with embedded nanoinclusions (NIs) modelled as potential barriers of cylindrical shape and height VB. We investigate the effect of randomness of the NIs on the thermoelectric power factor by varying the positions, diameter, and heights of the barriers according to a Gaussian probability distribution. We find that the po…
The physics of energy filtering in electronic transport through nanoscale barriers is a fundamental aspect in the context of electronic engineering of nanostructured thermoelectrics. In the context of thermoelectric generators, it aims to engineer the Seebeck coefficient to favorably increase the power factor and ultimately the power generated. In this work, we employ the incoherent non-equilibrium Green's function formalism to investigate in detail the physics of energy filtering and how it leads to a direct enhancement in power generation across nanostructured thermoelectrics featuring a sin…
Monte Carlo statistical ray-tracing methods are commonly employed to simulate carrier transport in nanostructured materials. In the case of a large degree of nanostructuring and under linear response (small driving fields), these simulations tend to be computationally overly expensive due to the difficulty in gathering the required flux statistics. Here, we present a novel MC ray-tracing algorithm with computational efficiency of at least an order of magnitude compared to existing algorithms. Our new method, which is a hybrid of analytical Boltzmann transport equation and Monte Carlo uses a re…
Investigating in detail the physics of energy filtering through a single planar energy barrier in nanostructured thermoelectric generators, we reinforce the non-trivial result that the anticipated enhancement in generated power at a given efficiency via energy filtering is a characteristic of systems dominated by incoherent scattering and is absent in ballistic devices. In such cases, assuming an energy dependent relaxation time $τ(E)=kE^r$, we show that there exists a minimum value $r_{min}$ beyond which generation can be enhanced by embedding nanobarriers. For bulk generators with embedded n…
Recent years witnessed a rapid growth of interest of scientific and engineering communities to thermal properties of materials. Carbon allotropes and derivatives occupy a unique place in terms of their ability to conduct heat. The room-temperature thermal conductivity of carbon materials span an extraordinary large range - of over five orders of magnitude - from the lowest in amorphous carbons to the highest in graphene and carbon nanotubes. I review thermal and thermoelectric properties of carbon materials focusing on recent results for graphene, carbon nanotubes and nanostructured carbon mat…
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 effects need to be considered as spatially distributed, rather than localized at junctions. The energy exchange between charge carriers and phonons is of fundamental scientific and technological interest, but their assessment poses significant experimental challenges. We addressed these challenges by imaging the temperature change induced by Peltier effects in…
Several models of thermionic energy nanoconverters have been proposed to study the transport phenomena that take place in electronic devices. For example, in resonant tunneling junctions those phenomena are manifested through the thermoelectric effects. The coupling between the electron flux and the heat flux in this type of semiconductor heterostructures, not only allows to obtain transport coefficients (electrical and thermal conductivities, and a Seebeck--like and Peltier--like coefficients), but also to study its operation as a thermionic generator or as a refrigerator within the context o…
We develop a computational framework, based on the Boltzmann transport equation, with the ability to compute the thermal transport in nanostructured materials of any geometry using as the only input the bulk thermal conductivity accumulation function. The main advantage of our method is twofold. First, while the scattering times and dispersion curves are unknown for most materials, the phonon mean free path distribution can be directly obtained by experiments. As a consequence, a wider range of materials can be simulated than with a frequency-dependent approach. Second, when phonon dispersions…
The wave-like nature of electrons leads to the existence of upper bounds on the thermoelectric response of nanostructured devices [R. S. Whitney, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 130601 (2014); Phys. Rev. B 91, 115425 (2015)]. This fundamental result, not present in classical thermodynamics, was demonstrated exploiting a two-terminal device modelled by non-linear scattering theory. In the present paper, we consider non-linear quantum transport through the same type of device working both as thermal machine and as refrigerator. For both operations, starting from charge and heat current expressions, we pro…
The thermal power ($PF=S^2G_e$) depends on the Seebeck coefficient ($S$) and electron conductance ($G_e$). The enhancement of $G_e$ will unavoidably suppress $S$ because they are closely related. As a consequence, the optimization of $PF$ is extremely difficult. Here, we theoretically investigated the thermoelectric properties of two-dimensional quantum dot (QD) arrays with carriers injected from electrodes. The Lorenz number of 2D QD arrays in the resonant tunneling procedure satisfies the Wiedemann-Franz law, which confirms the formation of minibands. When the miniband center is far away fro…
Tuning thermal transport in nanostructured materials is a powerful approach to develop high-efficiency thermoelectric materials. Using a recently developed approach based on the phonon mean free path dependent Boltzmann transport equation, we compute the effective thermal conductivity of nanoporous materials with pores of various shapes and arrangements. We assess the importance of pore-pore distance in suppressing thermal transport, and identify the pore arrangement that minimizes the thermal conductivity, composed of a periodic arrangement of two misaligned rows of triangular pores. Such a c…
The performance of thermoelectric energy harvesters can be improved by nanostructures that exploit inelastic transport processes. One prototype is the three-terminal hopping thermoelectric device where electron hopping between quantum-dots are driven by hot phonons. Such three-terminal hopping thermoelectric devices have potential in achieving high efficiency or power via inelastic transport and without relying on heavy-elements or toxic compounds. We show in this work how output power of the device can be optimized via tuning the number and energy configuration of the quantum-dots embedded in…
We investigate the interplay between the thermodynamic properties and spin-dependent transport in a mesoscopic device based on a magnetic multilayer (F/f/F), in which two strongly ferromagnetic layers (F) are exchange-coupled through a weakly ferromagnetic spacer (f) with the Curie temperature in the vicinity of room temperature. We show theoretically that the Joule heating produced by the spin-dependent current allows a spin-thermo-electronic control of the ferromagnetic-to-paramagnetic (f/N) transition in the spacer and, thereby, of the relative orientation of the outer F-layers in the devic…
Thermoelectric materials open a way to harness dissipated energy and make electronic devices less energy-demanding. Heat-to-electricity conversion requires materials with a strongly suppressed thermal conductivity but still high electronic conduction. This goal is largely achieved with the help of nanostructured materials, even if the bulk counterpart is not highly efficient. In this work, we investigate how thermoelectric efficiency is enhanced by many-body effects in graphene nanoribbons at low temperature. To this end, starting from the Kane-Mele-Hubbard model within a mean-field approximat…
Hierarchical material nanostructuring is considered to be a very promising direction for high performance thermoelectric materials. In this work we investigate thermal transport in hierarchically nanostructured silicon. We consider the combined presence of nanocrystallinity and nanopores, arranged under both ordered and randomized positions and sizes, by solving the Boltzmann transport equation using the Monte Carlo method. We show that nanocrystalline boundaries degrade the thermal conductivity more drastically when the average grain size becomes smaller than the average phonon mean free path…
The high field transport characteristics of nanostructured transistors based on layered materials are not only important from a device physics perspective but also for possible applications in next generation electronics. With the growing promise of layered materials as replacements to conventional silicon technology, we study here the high current density properties of the layered material titanium trisulfide (TiS3). We observe high breakdown current densities up to 1.7 10^6 A/cm^2 in TiS3 nanoribbon-based field-effect transistors which are among the highest found in semiconducting nanomateri…
Without a periodic reference framework, local structures in noncrystalline solids are difficult to specify, but they still exert an enormous influence on materials properties. For example, thermomechanical responses of organic and inorganic glasses sensitively depend on the distribution of free volume or soft spots$^{1,2}$. Meanwhile, strong electron localization$^{3}$ that endows unparalleled electrical breakdown strengths to amorphous insulators is easily compromised by local defects that promote inelastic tunneling over a variable range$^{4,5}$. Here we report how metallic conduction can ov…
We present an approach for achieving large Kerr $χ^{(3)}$--mediated thermal energy transfer at the nanoscale that exploits a general coupled-mode description of triply resonant, four-wave mixing processes. We analyze the efficiency of thermal upconversion and energy transfer from mid- to near-infrared wavelengths in planar geometries involving two slabs supporting far-apart surface plasmon polaritons and separated by a nonlinear $χ^{(3)}$ medium that is irradiated by externally incident light. We study multiple geometric and material configurations and different classes of interveening mediums…
