Power generation with nanowire resonant tunneling thermoelectrics

M. F. O'Dwyer, University of Wollongong
H. Linke, University of Oregon, USA
E. Hoffmann, University of Oregon, USA
T. E. Humphrey, University of Geneva, Switzerland
R. A. Lewis, University of Wollongong
C. Zhang, University of Wollongong

Article comments

This paper was originally published as: O'Dwyer, MF, Linke, H, Hoffmann, E, Humphrey, TE, Lewis, RA & Zhang, C, Power generation with nanowire resonant tunneling thermoelectrics, 25th International Conference on Thermoelectrics 2006 (ICT '06), Vienna, Austria, 6-10 August 2006, 228-233. Copyright 2006 IEEE.

Abstract

Nanowires have been predicted to yield significantly improved thermoelectric figures of merit. Here we describe the electron energy spectrum of a resonant tunneling heterostructure nanowire in detail and show how it may be used to realize energy filtering for thermoelectric electronic efficiencies approaching the Carnot limit. A proof-of-principle experiment is described that seeks to demonstrate such idealized electronic properties.