Powerful Coulomb-drag thermoelectric engine

Article

关键词: ANDERSON IMPURITY MODEL;    COUPLED QUANTUM DOTS;    ENERGY;    TRANSPORT;    HEAT;   

DOI  :  10.1103/PhysRevB.96.115414

来源: SCIE

【 摘 要 】

We investigate a thermoelectric nanoengine whose properties are steered by Coulomb interaction. The device whose design decouples charge and energy currents is made up of two interacting quantum dots connected to three different reservoirs. We show that, by tailoring the tunnel couplings, this setup can be made very attractive for energy-harvesting prospects, due to a delivered power that can be of the order of the quantum bound [R.S. Whitney, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 130601 (2014); Entropy 18, 208 (2016)], with a concomitant fair efficiency. To unveil its properties beyond the sequential quantum master equation, we apply a nonequilibrium noncrossing approximation in the Keldysh Green's function formalism, and a quantum master equation that includes cotunneling processes. Both approaches are rather qualitatively similar in a large operating regime where sequential tunneling alone fails.

【 授权许可】

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