Gate-modulated thermopower of disordered nanowires: II. Variable-range hopping regime

Abstract

We study the thermopower of a disordered nanowire in the field effect transistor configuration. After a first paper devoted to the elastic coherent regime (Bosisio R., Fleury G. and Pichard J.-L. 2014 \textit{New J. Phys.} \textbf{16} 035004), we consider here the inelastic activated regime taking place at higher temperatures. In the case where charge transport is thermally assisted by phonons (Mott Variable Range Hopping regime), we use the Miller-Abrahams random resistor network model as recently adapted by Jiang et al. for thermoelectric transport. This approach previously used to study the bulk of the nanowire impurity band is extended for studying its edges. In this limit, we show that the typical thermopower is largely enhanced, attaining values larger that $10k_B/e\sim 1{\mathrm{mV}\mathrm{K}}^{-1}$ and exhibiting a non-trivial behaviour as a function of the temperature. A percolation theory by Zvyagin extended to disordered nanowires allows us to account for the main observed edge behaviours of the thermopower.

20 pages, 2 appendices, final version as published

References in corpus (3)

• Giant thermovoltage in single InAs-nanowire field-effect transistors
• Apparent power-law behavior of conductance in disordered quasi-one-dimensional systems
• Effects of Strong Interactions in a Half Metallic Magnet: a Determinant Quantum Monte Carlo Study

Cited by in corpus (15)

• Fundamental aspects of steady-state conversion of heat to work at the nanoscale
• Separation of heat and charge currents for boosted thermoelectric conversion
• Thermoelectricity near Anderson localization transitions
• Quasiperiodic quantum heat engines with a mobility edge
• Enhancing efficiency and power of quantum-dots resonant tunneling thermoelectrics in three-terminal geometry by cooperative effects
• Enhancing Thermoelectric Performance Using Nonlinear Transport Effects
• From thermal rectifiers to thermoelectric devices
• Near-field three-terminal thermoelectric heat engine
• Nanowire-based thermoelectric ratchet in the hopping regime
• Using Activated Transport in Parallel Nanowires for Energy Harvesting and Hot Spot Cooling
• Staircase Quantum Dots Configuration in Nanowires for Optimized Thermoelectric Power
• Absorbing/Emitting Phonons with one dimensional MOSFETs
• Impurity-directed Transport within a Finite Disordered Lattice
• Thermoelectric coefficients and the figure of merit for large open quantum dots
• Dephasing-enhanced performance in quasiperiodic thermal machines