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arXiv 1701.02567cond-mat.mes-hall
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低维超晶格和纳米复合材料中热电能过滤机制的有效性

On the effectiveness of the thermoelectric energy filtering mechanism in low-dimensional superlattices and nano-composites

Mischa Thesberg, Hans Kosina, Neophytos Neophytou

摘要:

电子能量滤波是提高热电材料功率因数和ZT值的有效途径。在这项工作中,我们探讨的效果,降低维数的成功的能量过滤机制的功率因数增强。我们使用量子力学非平衡格林函数(NEGF)方法研究了包括电子-声子散射的电子输运,研究了一维和二维超晶格/纳米复合材料体系。我们发现,给定相同的材料参数,1D通道比2D通道更有效地利用能量过滤,因为它们:i)允许对于较小的阱尺寸/较小的晶粒实现最大功率因数(这是使声子散射最大化所需要的),ii)与阱/晶粒材料相比,更好地利用势垒/边界材料中的较低热导率:以及产生一种对最佳屏障设计的有害随机偏差具有鲁棒性的系统。在某些情况下,我们发现相对优势可以高达3倍。我们确定,能量过滤是最有效的载流子流的平均能量变化最多的井和障碍沿通道,出现的事件时,在主机材料中的载流子流的能量低,当能量弛豫载流子的平均自由程是短的。虽然导致1D系统比2D系统有更大相对改善的这些方面的最终原因是1D系统在状态密度中的van Hove奇点,但所获得的见解是通用的,并为超越维度考虑的能量过滤设计提供信息。

英文摘要:

Electron energy filtering has been suggested as a promising way to improve the power factor and enhance the ZT figure of merit of thermoelectric materials. In this work we explore the effect that reduced dimensionality has on the success of the energy-filtering mechanism for power factor enhancement. We use the quantum mechanical non-equilibrium Green's function (NEGF) method for electron transport including electron-phonon scattering to explore 1D and 2D superlattice/nanocomposite systems. We find that, given identical material parameters, 1D channels utilize energy filtering more effectively than 2D as they: i) allow one to achieve maximal power factor for smaller well sizes / smaller grains (which is needed to maximize phonon scattering), ii) take better advantage of a lower thermal conductivity in the barrier/boundary materials compared to the well/grain materials in both: enhancing the Seebeck coefficient; and in producing a system which is robust against detrimental random deviations from optimal barrier design. In certain cases we find that the relative advantage can be as high as a factor of 3. We determine that energy-filtering is most effective when the average energy of carrier flow varies the most in the wells and the barriers along the channel, an event which appears when the energy of the carrier flow in the host material is low and when the energy relaxation mean-free-path of carriers is short. Although the ultimate reason these aspects, which cause a 1D system to see greater relative improvement than a 2D, is the 1D system's van Hove singularity in the density-of-states, the insights obtained are general and inform energy-filtering design beyond dimensional considerations.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

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