Enhancement of thermoelectric performance in InAs nanotubes by tuning quantum confinement effect

Journal Article · Fri Mar 28 00:00:00 EDT 2014 · Journal of Applied Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4869745· OSTI ID:22271161

Zhou, Wu-Xing; Tan, Shihua; Chen, Ke-Qiu ^[1]; Hu, Wenping ^[2]

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1. Department of Applied Physics, Hunan University, Changsha 410082 (China)
2. Key Laboratory of Organic Solids, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080 (China)

By using the nonequilibrium Green's function method, we study the thermoelectric properties of InAs nanotubes. The results show that InAs nanotube with a certain internal diameter has much higher ZT value than nanowire due to the enhancement of quantum confinement effect leading to the increase of the power factor S{sup 2}G. The ZT value of InAs nanotube can reach 1.74, which is about three times greater than that of nanowires. Moreover, it is found that the ZT values of InAs nanotubes decrease rapidly with the increase of internal diameter, which results from the rapid increase of phonons thermal conductance due to the “red shift” of low-frequency optical phonon modes.

• OSTI ID: 22271161
• Journal Information: Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 115, Issue 12; Other Information: (c) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0021-8979
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY
GREEN FUNCTION
INDIUM ARSENIDES
NANOTUBES
PERFORMANCE
PHONONS
POWER FACTOR
QUANTUM WIRES
THERMOELECTRIC PROPERTIES