Nano Idea
Thermoelectric effect in an Aharonov-Bohm ring with an embedded quantum dot
1 State Key Laboratory of Superlattices and Microstructures, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, China
2 College of Engineering, Bohai University, Jinzhou 121013, China
3 Department of Physics, Bohai University, Jinzhou 121000, China
Nanoscale Research Letters 2012, 7:157 doi:10.1186/1556-276X-7-157
Published: 28 February 2012Abstract
Thermoelectric effect is studied in an Aharonov-Bohm interferometer with an embedded quantum dot (QD) in the Coulomb blockade regime. The electrical conductance, electron thermal conductance, thermopower, and thermoelectric figure-of-merit are calculated by using the Keldysh Green's function method. It is found that the figure-of-merit ZT of the QD ring may be quite high due to the Fano effect originated from the quantum interference effect. Moreover, the thermoelectric efficiency is sensitive to the magnitude of the dot-lead and inter-lead coupling strengthes. The effect of intradot Coulomb repulsion on ZT is significant in the weak-coupling regime, and then large ZT values can be obtained at rather high temperature.
