Incoherent scattering can favorably influence energy filtering in nanostructured thermoelectrics.

ABSTRACT: Investigating in detail the physics of energy filtering through a single planar energy barrier in nanostructured thermoelectric generators, we reinforce the non-trivial result that the anticipated enhancement in generated power at a given efficiency via energy filtering is a characteristic of systems dominated by incoherent scattering and is absent in ballistic devices. In such cases, assuming an energy dependent relaxation time τ(E) = kE ^r , we show that there exists a minimum value r _min beyond which generation can be enhanced by embedding nanobarriers. For bulk generators with embedded nanobarriers, we delve into the details of inter sub-band scattering and show that it has finite contribution to the enhancement in generation. We subsequently discuss the realistic

SUBMITTER: Singha A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5554188 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature