Confinement effect on thermopower of electrolytes

Ionic Seebeck effect of electrolytes has shown promising applications in harvesting energy from low-grade waste-heat sources with small temperature difference the environment, which can power sensors and Internet-of-Things devices. Recent experiments have demonstrated giant thermopower (~ 10 mV/K) under confinement due to overlapping electric double layer (EDL). Nonetheless, there been no consensus on theory ionic effect, especially whether depends diffusivities, imposing confusion theoretical interpretation experimental discovery confined electrolytes. This article presents a linear perturbative solution Poisson-Nernst-Planck (PNP) equations describe liquid We provide both analytical numerical solutions PNP for closed systems open connected reservoirs The captured along perpendicular gradient, showed excellent agreement numerically solved wide range EDL potentials, channel widths, lengths. Finally, we show that polyelectrolytes largely mismatched only be enhanced system through gradient.