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Performance analysis of a tunneling thermoelectric heat engine with nano-scaled quantum well

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Abstract

A numerical model of a nano-scaled thermoelectric heat engine with InP/InAs/InP trilayer quantum well (QW) is investigated. The expressions of those performance parameters, such as current, power output, and efficiency are expressed. By numerical calculation, the resonant tunneling behavior of electrons in the QW is described, which seems like a very good energy selective electron mechanism for the heat engine. After considering the radiation heat leakage, for fixed layer thicknesses of the QW, the optimum working regions of the heat engine with respect to the chemical potentials and the bias voltage are obtained numerically under the economic criterion. From these results, the power output can be increased by narrowing down the layer thicknesses. In addition, owing to the radiant heat leakage, the efficiency initially increases in the working regions and then decreases when the layer thicknesses increase gradually, from which one can obtain a maximum efficiency by optimizing layer thicknesses of QW. These results calculated here may provide a guide for the optimum designs of tunneling thermoelectric devices.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation (No. 11365015), Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University of Ministry of Education of China (No. NCET-11-0096), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and Research and Innovation Project for College Graduates of Jiangsu Province (No. CXZZ13_0081), People’s Republic of China.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China

    Xiaoguang Luo & Teng Qiu

  2. Department of Physical and Electronics, Anhui Science and Technology University, Bengbu, 233100, China

    Nian Liu

  3. Department of Physics, Nanchang University, Nanchang, 330031, China

    Jizhou He

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  1. Xiaoguang Luo
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  2. Nian Liu
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  3. Jizhou He
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  4. Teng Qiu
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Correspondence to Xiaoguang Luo or Teng Qiu.

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Luo, X., Liu, N., He, J. et al. Performance analysis of a tunneling thermoelectric heat engine with nano-scaled quantum well. Appl. Phys. A 117, 1031–1039 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-014-8503-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-014-8503-3

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