Dresden 2017 – scientific programme
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TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen
TT 71: Superconductivity: Cryodetectors and Cryotechnique
TT 71.4: Talk
Thursday, March 23, 2017, 15:45–16:00, HSZ 201
High efficiency thermoelectric devices based on superconductor-quantum dot hybrid — •Sun-Yong Hwang1,2, Rosa Lopez2, and David Sanchez2 — 1Theoretische Physik, Universitat Duisburg-Essen, D-47048 Duisburg, Germany — 2Institut de Física Interdisciplinària i Sistemes Complexos IFISC (UIB-CSIC), E-07122 Palma de Mallorca, Spain
Superconductors are perfect electric conductors but poor thermal conductors which would be excellent for generating thermoelectric effects. However, the superconducting density of states exhibits particle-hole symmetry suppressing the thermovoltage creation. Therefore, one needs to devise a way to break this symmetry for thermoelectric applications. We propose that superconductor-quantum dot hybrid systems can pave the way for versatile thermoelectric devices with high efficiencies. By attaching a ferromagnetic lead to the quantum dot, this device can act as a thermoelectric engine with a large figure-of-merit ZT [1]. Moreover, nonlinear thermocurrents of this device show strong rectification and diode effects [2]. We also discuss interesting nonlinear cross coupling effects in the subgap regime [3]. Importantly, this device can be easily tunable by a gate potential and a magnetic field applied to the quantum dot.
[1] S.-Y. Hwang et al., Phys. Rev. B 94, 054506 (2016).
[2] S.-Y. Hwang et al., New J. Phys. 18, 093024 (2016).
[3] S.-Y. Hwang et al., Phys. Rev. B 91, 104518 (2015).