The maximum cooling temperature of a uniform thermoelectric material is limited by its dimensionless figure of merit ZT. Inhomogeneous or graded thermoelectric materials are mainly studied when there is a large temperature gradient and the material composition is typically optimized for maximum local ZT. We show that this is not the correct optimization for maximizing the cooling temperature. W...

Energy transport in nanostructures differs significantly from macrostructures because of classical and quantum size effects on energy carriers. Experimental results show that the thermal conductivity values of nanostructures such as superlattices are significantly lower than that of their bulk constituent materials. The reduction in thermal conductivity led to a large increase in the thermoelec...

We examine the relation between the phase-coherent processes and spin-dependent thermoelectric effects in an Aharonov-Bohm (AB) interferometer with a Rashba quantum dot (QD) in each of its arm by using the Green's function formalism and equation of motion (EOM) technique. Due to the interplay between quantum destructive interference and Rashba spin-orbit interaction (RSOI) in each QD, an asymme...

Title of Dissertation: On-Chip Thermoelectric Cooling of Semiconductor Hot Spot Peng Wang, Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Directed By: Professor Avram Bar-Cohen Assistant Professor Bao Yang Department of Mechanical Engineering The Moore’s Law progression in semiconductor technology, including shrinking feature size, increasing transistor density, and faster circuit speeds, is leading to increasing ...

A column-type micro thermoelectric cooler is being fabricated using p-type Sb2Te3 and n-type Bi2Te3 films (approximately 4 μm thick). The films are grown by thermal co-evaporation and patterned on Cr/Au/Ti/Pt (hot) connectors, which are deposited onto a silicon dioxide coated wafer. The column height is limited by control of the Te deposition rate. Although a high substrate temperature during t...

In this paper we present a detailed theory of electron and thermoelectric transport perpendicular to heterostructure superlattices. This nonlinear transport regime above barriers is also called heterostructure thermionic emission. We show that metal-based superlattices with tall barriers can achieve a large effective thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT > 5 at room temperature). A key parameter t...

Whereas thermoelectric performance is normally limited by the figure of merit ZT, transverse thermoelectrics can achieve arbitrarily large temperature differences in a single leg even with inferior ZT by being geometrically tapered. We introduce a band-engineered transverse thermoelectric with p-type Seebeck in one direction and n-type orthogonal, resulting in off-diagonal terms that drive heat...

We report measurements of electronic, thermoelectric, and galvanomagnetic properties of individual single crystal antimony telluride (Sb(2)Te(3)) nanowires with diameters in the range of 20-100 nm. Temperature-dependent resistivity and thermoelectric power (TEP) measurements indicate hole dominant diffusive thermoelectric generation with an enhancement of the TEP for smaller diameter wires up t...

We demonstrate the rational solution-phase synthesis of compositional modulated telluride nanowire heterostructures containing lead telluride (PbTe) and bismuth telluride (Bi2Te3). By tuning the ratio between PbTe and Bi2Te3 through adjusting the amount of critical reactants and precursors during the synthesis, the influence of composition on the thermoelectric properties of the nanowire hetero...

This paper presents an improved model for SPICE-based simulation of thermoelectric structures which includes circuit elements for simulating thermoelectric Peltier and Thomson effects, and shows greatly improved accuracy over previous models where those are neglected. The complete thermoelectric model is verified by comparing with experimental results on temperature distributions of suspended a...