Separation of heat and charge currents for boosted thermoelectric conversion

Abstract

In a multi-terminal device the (electronic) heat and charge currents can follow different paths. In this paper we introduce and analyse a class of multi-terminal devices where this property is pushed to its extreme limits, with charge $and$ heat currents flowing in different reservoirs. After introducing the main characteristics of such $heat-charge$ $current$ $separation$ regime we show how to realise it in a multi-terminal device with normal and superconducting leads. We demonstrate that this regime allows to control independently heat and charge flows and to greatly enhance thermoelectric performances at low temperatures. We analyse in details a three-terminal setup involving a superconducting lead, a normal lead and a voltage probe. For a generic scattering region we show that in the regime of heat-charge current separation both the power factor and the figure of merit $ZT$ are highly increased with respect to a standard two-terminal system. These results are confirmed for the specific case of a system consisting of three coupled quantum dots.

12 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (17)

• Optimal energy quanta to current conversion
• Nonlocal Thermoelectric Effects and Nonlocal Onsager Relations in a Three-Terminal Proximity-Coupled Superconductor-Ferromagnet Device
• Powerful and efficient energy harvester with resonant-tunneling quantum dots
• Strong bounds on Onsager coefficients and efficiency for three terminal thermoelectric transport in a magnetic field
• Magnon-driven quantum-dot heat engine
• Thermoelectric efficiency of three-terminal quantum thermal machines
• Efficiency of three-terminal thermoelectric transport under broken-time reversal symmetry
• Enhanced performance of joint cooling and energy production
• Thermopower induced by a supercurrent in superconductor-normal-metal structures
• Thermodynamic bounds and general properties of optimal efficiency and power in linear responses
• Enhancing efficiency and power of quantum-dots resonant tunneling thermoelectrics in three-terminal geometry by cooperative effects
• Quantum Nernst engines
• ThermoElectric Transport Properties of a Chain of Quantum Dots with Self-Consistent Reservoirs
• Thermopower oscillations in mesoscopic Andreev interferometers
• Railway switch transport model
• Time-delay matrix, midgap spectral peak, and thermopower of an Andreev billiard
• Using Activated Transport in Parallel Nanowires for Energy Harvesting and Hot Spot Cooling

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Efficiency bounds on thermoelectric transport in magnetic fields: The role of inelastic processes
• Nonlocal quantum heat engines made of hybrid superconducting devices
• Comparative study of heat-driven and power-driven refrigerators with Coulomb-coupled quantum dots
• Hybrid quantum thermal machines with dynamical couplings
• Scanning probe-induced thermoelectrics in a quantum point contact
• Illusory cracks in the second law of thermodynamics in quantum nanoelectronics