Optimizing the performance of thermionic devices using energy filtering

Abstract

Conventional thermionic power generators and refrigerators utilize a barrier in the direction of transport to selectively transmit high-energy electrons. Here we show that the energy spectrum of electrons transmitted in this way is not optimal, and we derive the ideal energy spectrum for operation in the maximum power regime. By using suitable energy filters, such as resonances in quantum dots, the power of thermionic devices can, in principle, be improved by an order of magnitude.

3 pages, 2 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Reversible thermoelectric nanomaterials
• Reversible quantum Brownian heat engines for electrons
• Multilayer Thermionic Refrigerator and Generator

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• Hot Carrier Extraction Using Energy Selective Contacts and Its Impact on the Limiting Efficiency of a Hot Carrier Solar Cell
• Quantum-dot thermometry
• Energetic optimization effects in single resonant tunneling $GaAs$--nanoconverters