Thermoelectric devices that utilize the Seebeck effect convert heat flow into electrical energy and are highly desirable for the development of portable, solid state, passively-powered electronic systems. The conversion efficiencies of such devices a
re quantified by the dimensionless thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT), which is proportional to the ratio of a devices electrical conductance to its thermal conductance. High ZT (>2) has been achieved in materials via all-scale hierarchical architecturing. This efficiency holds at high temperatures (700K~900K) but quickly diminishes at lower temperatures. In this paper, a recently-fabricated two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor called phosphorene (monolayer black phosphorus) is assessed for its thermoelectric capabilities. First-principles and model calculations reveal that phosphorene possesses spatially-anisotropic electrical and thermal conductances. The prominent electrical and thermal conducting directions are orthogonal to one another, enhancing the ratio of these conductances. As a result, ZT can reach 2.5 (the criterion for commercial deployment) along the armchair direction of phosphorene at T=500K and is greater than 1 even at room temperature given moderate doping (~2 x 10^16 m-2). Ultimately, phosphorene stands out as an environmentally sound thermoelectric material with unprecedented qualities: intrinsically, it is a mechanically flexible material that converts heat energy with high efficiency at low temperatures (~ 300K) - one whose performance does not require any sophisticated engineering techniques.
Using resonant interaction of three Rydberg atoms with a single-mode microwave cavity, we consider a realization of three-qubit Grover search algorithm in the presence of weak cavity decay, based on a previous idea for three-qubit quantum gate [Phys.
Rev. A 73, 064304 (2006)]. We simulate the searching process under the influence of the cavity decay and show that our scheme could be achieved efficiently to find the marked state with high fidelity. The required operations are very close to the reach with current cavity QED techniques.
