Using Activated Transport in Parallel Nanowires for Energy Harvesting and Hot Spot Cooling

Abstract

We study arrays of parallel doped semiconductor nanowires in a temperature range where the electrons propagate through the nanowires by phonon assisted hops between localized states. By solving the Random Resistor Network problem, we compute the thermopower $S$, the electrical conductance $G$, and the electronic thermal conductance $K^e$ of the device. We investigate how those quantities depend on the position -- which can be tuned with a back gate -- of the nanowire impurity band with respect to the equilibrium electrochemical potential. We show that large power factors can be reached near the band edges, when $S$ self-averages to large values while $G$ is small but scales with the number of wires. Calculating the amount of heat exchanged locally between the electrons inside the nanowires and the phonons of the environment, we show that phonons are mainly absorbed near one electrode and emitted near the other when a charge current is driven through the nanowires near their band edges. This phenomenon could be exploited for a field control of the heat exchange between the phonons and the electrons at submicron scales in electronic circuits. It could be also used for cooling hot spots.

arXiv comment12 pages, 8 figures, 4 appendices

References in corpus (22)

• Reversible thermoelectric nanomaterials
• The Quantum Absorption Refrigerator
• Electron- and phonon transport in silicon nanowires: an atomistic approach to thermoelectric properties
• One-Dimensional Quantum Confinement Effect Modulated Thermoelectric Properties in InAs Nanowires
• Reaching optimal efficiencies using nano-sized photo-electric devices
• Thermoelectric three-terminal hopping transport through one-dimensional nanosystems
• Size dependent thermoelectric properties of silicon nanowires
• Phonon Heat Conduction in Corrugated Silicon Nanowires Below the Casimir Limit
• Concept study for a high-efficiency nanowire-based thermoelectric
• Normal metal - superconductor tunnel junction as a Brownian refrigerator
• Giant thermovoltage in single InAs-nanowire field-effect transistors
• Thermoelectric properties of the bismuth telluride nanowires in the constant-relaxation-time approximation
• Thermoelectric properties of electrically gated bismuth telluride nanowires
• Hopping thermoelectric transport in finite systems: boundary effects
• Ultrathin GaN Nanowires: Electronic, Thermal, and Thermoelectric Properties
• Analysis of Thermoelectric Properties of Scaled Silicon Nanowires Using an Atomistic Tight-Binding Model
• Gate-modulated thermopower of disordered nanowires: II. Variable-range hopping regime
• Gate-modulated thermopower in disordered nanowires: I. Low temperature coherent regime
• Gated Si nanowires for large thermoelectric power factors
• Numerical study of the thermoelectric power factor in ultra-thin Si nanowires
• Energy bands, conductance and thermoelectric power for ballistic electrons in a nanowire with spin-orbit interaction
• Atomistic calculation of the thermoelectric properties of Si nanowires

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Fundamental aspects of steady-state conversion of heat to work at the nanoscale
• Separation of heat and charge currents for boosted thermoelectric conversion
• Enhancing Thermoelectric Performance Using Nonlinear Transport Effects
• Near-field three-terminal thermoelectric heat engine
• Thermoelectric Cooperative Effect in Three-Terminal Elastic Transport through a Quantum Dot
• Nanowire-based thermoelectric ratchet in the hopping regime
• Optimization of a three-terminal non-linear heat nano-engine
• Coherent control of thermoelectric currents and noise in quantum thermocouples
• Quantum thermocouples: nonlocal conversion and control of heat in nanostructures
• Absorbing/Emitting Phonons with one dimensional MOSFETs
• Thermoelectric coefficients and the figure of merit for large open quantum dots