Thermoelectric figure of merit in topological insulators

Enhanced thermoelectric figure of merit in thin GaAs nanowires.

Combining density functional theory and the nonequilibrium Green's function method, we investigate the thermoelectric properties of thin GaAs nanowires (NWs). After identifying the most stable structures for GaAs NWs, either in wurtzite (wz) or zinc blende (zb) stacking, we present a systematic analysis on the thermoelectric properties of these NWs and their dependence on stacking type (wz or z...

Enhanced thermoelectric figure of merit in polycrystalline carbon nanostructures

Thomas Lehmann,1,2 Dmitry A. Ryndyk,1,2,3 and Gianaurelio Cuniberti1,2,3 1Institute for Materials Science and Max Bergmann Center of Biomaterials, TU Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany 2Dresden Center for Computational Materials Science (DCMS), TU Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany 3Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden, TU Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany (Received 6 January 2015; revised manuscri...

Enhancing the thermoelectric figure of merit in engineered graphene nanoribbons

We demonstrate that thermoelectric properties of graphene nanoribbons can be dramatically improved by introducing nanopores. In monolayer graphene, this increases the electronic thermoelectric figure of merit ZT e from 0.01 to 0.5. The largest values of ZT e are found when a nanopore is introduced into bilayer graphene, such that the current flows from one layer to the other via the inner surfa...

Phase transition enhanced thermoelectric figure-of-merit in copper chalcogenides

Enhanced thermoelectric figure of merit of p-type half-Heuslers.

Half-Heuslers would be important thermoelectric materials due to their high temperature stability and abundance if their dimensionless thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT) could be made high enough. The highest peak ZT of a p-type half-Heusler has been so far reported about 0.5 due to the high thermal conductivity. Through a nanocomposite approach using ball milling and hot pressing, we have ach...