Thermal control and generation of charge currents in coupled quantum dots

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Erscheinungsjahr:
2016
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Text
Beschreibung:
  • This article reviews recent thermoelectric experiments on quantum dot (QD) systems. The experiments focus on two types of inter‐dot coupling: tunnel coupling and Coulomb coupling. Tunnel‐coupled QDs allow particles to be exchanged between the attached reservoirs via the QD system. Hence, an applied temperature bias results in a thermovoltage. When being investigated as a function of QD energies, this leads to the thermopower stability diagram. Here, largest thermovoltage is observed in the regions of the triple points. In a QD system which exhibits only capacitive inter‐dot coupling, electron transfer is suppressed. Such a device is studied in a three‐terminal geometry: while one QD connects to the heat reservoir, the other one can exchange electrons with two reservoirs at a lower temperature. When the symmetry of the tunneling coefficients in the cold system is broken, the device becomes an energy harvester: thermal energy is extracted from the heat reservoir and is converted into a directed charge current between the two cold reservoirs. This review illustrates the large potential of multi‐QD devices for thermoelectrics and thermal management at the nanometer‐scale.
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  • info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess
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Forschungsinformationssystem der UHH

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oai:www.edit.fis.uni-hamburg.de:publications/7b83a7e3-3187-4730-bfab-2791480406ce