No Arabic abstract
Molecular junctions and similar devices described by an energy dependent transmission coefficient can have a high linear response thermoelectric figure of merit. Since such devices are inherently non-linear, the full thermodynamic efficiency valid for any temperature and chemical potential difference across the leads is calculated. The general features in the energy dependence of the tranmission function that lead to high efficiency and also high power output are determined. It is shown that the device with the highest efficiency does not necessarily lead to large power output. To illustrate this, we use a model called the t-stub model representing tunneling through an energy level connected to another energy level. Within this model both high efficiency and high power output are achievable. Futhermore, by connecting many nanodevices it is shown to be possible to scale up the power output without compromising efficiency in an (exactly solvable) n-channel model even with tunneling between the devices.
In a series of recent papers anomalous Hall and Nernst effects have been theoretically discussed in the non-linear regime and have seen some early success in experiments. In this paper, by utilizing the role of Berry curvature dipole, we derive the fundamental mathematical relations between the anomalous electric and thermoelectric transport coefficients in the non-linear regime. The formulae we derive replace the celebrated Wiedemann-Franz law and Mott relation of anomalous thermoelectric transport coefficients defined in the linear response regime. In addition to fundamental and testable new formulae, an important byproduct of this work is the prediction of nonlinear anomalous thermal Hall effect which can be observed in experiments.
We consider the nonlinear scattering theory for three-terminal thermoelectric devices, used for power generation or refrigeration. Such systems are quantum phase-cohere
The current transport and thermoelectric properties of Fe3O4 / SiO2 / p-type Si(001) heterostructures with Fe3O4 thicknesses of 150, 200, and 350 nm have been investigated between 100 and 300 K. We observe a sharp drop of the in-plane resistivity at 200K due to the onset of conduction along the Si / SiO2 interface related to tunneling of electrons from the Fe3O4 into the accumulation layer of holes at the Si / SiO2 interface, whose existence was confirmed by capacitance-voltage measurements and a two band analysis of the Hall effect. This is accompanied by a large increase of the Seebeck coefficient reaching +1000 {mu}V/K at 300K that is related to holes in the p-type Si(001) and gives a power factor of 70 mW/K2m when the Fe3O4 layer thickness is reduced down to 150 nm. We show that most of the current flows in the Fe3O4 layer at 300 K, while the Fe3O4 / SiO2 / p-type Si(001) heterostructures behave like tunneling p-n junctions in the transverse direction.
The trade-off between large power output, high efficiency and small fluctuations in the operation of heat engines has recently received interest in the context of thermodynamic uncertainty relations (TURs). Here we provide a concrete illustration of this trade-off by theoretically investigating the operation of a quantum point contact (QPC) with an energy-dependent transmission function as a steady-state thermoelectric heat engine. As a starting point, we review and extend previous analysis of the power production and efficiency. Thereafter the power fluctuations and the bound jointly imposed on the power, efficiency and fluctuations by the TURs are analyzed as additional performance quantifiers. We allow for arbitrary smoothness of the transmission probability of the QPC, which exhibits a close to step-like dependence in energy, and consider both the linear and the non-linear regime of operation. It is found that for a broad range of parameters, the power production reaches nearly its theoretical maximum value, with efficiencies more than half of the Carnot efficiency and at the same time with rather small fluctuations. Moreover, we show that by demanding a non-zero power production, in the linear regime a stronger TUR can be formulated in terms of the thermoelectric figure of merit. Interestingly, this bound holds also in a wide parameter regime beyond linear response for our QPC device.
We investigate with the aid of numerical renormalization group techniques the thermoelectric properties of a molecular quantum dot described by the negative-U Anderson model. We show that the charge Kondo effect provides a mechanism for enhanced thermoelectric power via a correlation induced asymmetry in the spectral function close to the Fermi level. We show that this effect results in a dramatic enhancement of the Kondo induced peak in the thermopower of negative-U systems with Seebeck coefficients exceeding 50$mu V/K$ over a wide range of gate voltages.