Seminarium "Teoria i Modelowanie Nanostruktur"

The amount of energy consumed by humans has soared dramatically in the last decades. To meet the demand we cannot only afford any losses but need to develop new clean sources. Nevertheless it appears that only 34% of energy contained in natural resources is used to power actual devices. The rest 66% is simply wasted, mainly as emitted heat. Converting heat into electrical current, which is called thermoelectric effect, is one of the possibilities of reusing thermal radiation. The effect requires specific materials’ properties that are difficult to discern. Previous publications reported that the promising thermoelectric material is Si and Ge and that two-dimensional structure improves thermoelectric efficiency. Thus, we investigated numerically 2-D nanoribbons made of atoms of Si, Ge, and both of them with and without defects implemented. Here, I will present the theoretical approach of thermoelectric effect and the results of transmission calculations.

The amount of energy consumed by humans has soared dramatically in the last decades. To meet the demand we cannot only afford any losses but need to develop new clean sources. Nevertheless it appears that only 34% of energy contained in natural resources is used to power actual devices. The rest 66% is simply wasted, mainly as emitted heat. Converting heat into electrical current, which is called thermoelectric effect, is one of the possibilities of reusing thermal radiation. The effect requires specific materials’ properties that are difficult to discern. Previous publications reported that the promising thermoelectric material is Si and Ge and that two-dimensional structure improves thermoelectric efficiency. Thus, we investigated numerically 2-D nanoribbons made of atoms of Si, Ge, and both of them with and without defects implemented. Here, I will present the theoretical approach of thermoelectric effect and the results of transmission calculations.—