Berlin 2012 – scientific programme

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TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen

TT 21: Transport: Nanoelectronics I - Quantum Dots, Wires, Point Contacts 3

TT 21.5: Talk

Tuesday, March 27, 2012, 10:30–10:45, BH 334

Nanocaloritronic performance analysis of an interacting quantum dot thermoelectric system — •Bhaskaran Muralidharan and Milena Grifoni — nstitut I - Theoretische Physik Universität Regensburg D-93040 Regensburg

By subjecting a weakly coupled quantum dot system to an applied voltage and temperature gradient, we present notable subtleties involved in its thermoelectric energy conversion efficiency. First, is the well known, but non-intuitive aspect in the non-interacting case, of achieving a reversible operation with Carnot efficiency. Second, is the rather surprising result in the presence of Coulomb interactions that similar operating conditions lead to zero efficiency [1]. It is then shown that even in this case, operating efficiencies close to the Carnot value may be attained, but, under non-equilibrium conditions [1]. Consequently, the inadequacies of traditionally employed performance metric zT in capturing the aforementioned non-equilibrium conditions are pointed out.
B. Muralidharan and M. Grifoni, cond-mat/1110.4357 (2011).