The thermoelectric effect of magnesium silicide is studied by using a thermodynamical method in the presence of an electric field. The thermoelectric potential is evaluated from the partial derivative of free energy with respect to charge in which the free energy is calculated at the B3LYP/6-31G(d,p) level of density functional theory. This free energy is also utilized to determine the average ...

Thermoelectric materials may contribute in the near future as new alternative sources of sustainable energy. Unprecedented thermoelectric properties in p-type SnSe single crystals have been recently reported, accompanied by extremely low thermal conductivity in polycrystalline samples. In order to enhance thermoelectric efficiency through proper tuning of this material we report a full structur...

Atomic and molecular junctions are an emerging class of thermoelectric materials that exploit quantum confinement effects to obtain an enhanced figure of merit. An important feature in such nanoscale systems is that the electron and heat transport become highly sensitive to the atomic configurations. Here we report the characterization of geometry-sensitive thermoelectricity in atom-sized junct...

The maximum cooling temperature of a uniform thermoelectric material is limited by its dimensionless figure of merit ZT. Inhomogeneous or graded thermoelectric materials are mainly studied when there is a large temperature gradient and the material composition is typically optimized for maximum local ZT. We show that this is not the correct optimization for maximizing the cooling temperature. W...

Energy transport in nanostructures differs significantly from macrostructures because of classical and quantum size effects on energy carriers. Experimental results show that the thermal conductivity values of nanostructures such as superlattices are significantly lower than that of their bulk constituent materials. The reduction in thermal conductivity led to a large increase in the thermoelec...

We examine the relation between the phase-coherent processes and spin-dependent thermoelectric effects in an Aharonov-Bohm (AB) interferometer with a Rashba quantum dot (QD) in each of its arm by using the Green's function formalism and equation of motion (EOM) technique. Due to the interplay between quantum destructive interference and Rashba spin-orbit interaction (RSOI) in each QD, an asymme...

Title of Dissertation: On-Chip Thermoelectric Cooling of Semiconductor Hot Spot Peng Wang, Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Directed By: Professor Avram Bar-Cohen Assistant Professor Bao Yang Department of Mechanical Engineering The Moore’s Law progression in semiconductor technology, including shrinking feature size, increasing transistor density, and faster circuit speeds, is leading to increasing ...

A column-type micro thermoelectric cooler is being fabricated using p-type Sb2Te3 and n-type Bi2Te3 films (approximately 4 μm thick). The films are grown by thermal co-evaporation and patterned on Cr/Au/Ti/Pt (hot) connectors, which are deposited onto a silicon dioxide coated wafer. The column height is limited by control of the Te deposition rate. Although a high substrate temperature during t...

In this paper we present a detailed theory of electron and thermoelectric transport perpendicular to heterostructure superlattices. This nonlinear transport regime above barriers is also called heterostructure thermionic emission. We show that metal-based superlattices with tall barriers can achieve a large effective thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT > 5 at room temperature). A key parameter t...

Whereas thermoelectric performance is normally limited by the figure of merit ZT, transverse thermoelectrics can achieve arbitrarily large temperature differences in a single leg even with inferior ZT by being geometrically tapered. We introduce a band-engineered transverse thermoelectric with p-type Seebeck in one direction and n-type orthogonal, resulting in off-diagonal terms that drive heat...