Electron tunneling induced thermoelectric effects

Abstract

We introduce a direct (Seebeck) and inverse (Peltier) thermoelectric effect induced by electron tunneling between closely separated conducting films. When a transverse temperature gradient is applied along one of two films, a bias voltage is induced in the second thanks to the heat transfer mediated by electrons tunneling through the separation gap. We highlight a non trivial behavior for this Seebeck effect with respect to geometric characteristics of interacting films. Conversely, when an electric current passes through one of two films a strong thermal power can be removed from or inserted in the second film through an induced Peltier effect. In particular we highlight conditions where the induced Seebeck and Peltier coefficients are larger than in the bulk. These induced thermoelectric effects could find broad applications in the fields of energy conversion and cooling at nanoscale.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Near-field Radiative Heat Transfer in Many-Body Systems
• Extreme Near-Field Heat Transfer Between Gold Surfaces
• Atomistic simulation of phonon heat transport across metallic nanogaps
• Role of Nottingham effect in the heat transfer in extreme near-field regime
• Electronic heat tunneling between two metals beyond the WKB approximation