Loughborough University
Browse
Giant thermopower and figure of merit of semiconducting polaronic nanolayers.pdf (415.26 kB)

Giant thermopower and figure of merit of semiconducting polaronic nanolayers

Download (415.26 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2010-08-24, 11:49 authored by A.S. Alexandrov, A.M. Bratkovsky
Polarons—electrons coupled with lattice vibrations—play a key role in transport and optical properties of many semiconductors. Here, we calculate the energy spectrum and thermopower of Fröhlich polarons confined to a potential well as a function of the well thickness. We show that the polaron mass enhancement in 2+ϵ dimensions explains a giant thermoelectric power recently observed in doped semiconducting nanolayers (multiple quantum wells) and propose a route for enhancing the performance of thermoelectric energy nanoconverters by increasing their figure of merit by more than one order of magnitude.

History

School

  • Science

Department

  • Physics

Citation

ALEXANDROV, A.S. and BRATKOVSKY, A.M., 2010. Giant thermopower and figure of merit of semiconducting polaronic nanolayers. Physical Review B, 81, 153204, 4 pp.

Publisher

© American Physical Society

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publication date

2010

ISSN

1098-0121

Language

  • en

Usage metrics

    Loughborough Publications

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC