Lineshape of the thermopower of quantum dots

Quantum dots are an important model system for thermoelectric phenomena, and may be used to enhance the thermal-to-electric energy conversion efficiency in functional materials. It is therefore important to obtain a detailed understanding of a quantum-dot's thermopower as a function of the Fermi energy. However, so far it has proven difficult to take effects of co-tunnelling into account in the interpretation of experimental data. Here we show that a single-electron tunnelling model, using knowledge of the dot's electrical conductance which in fact includes all-order co-tunneling effects, predicts the thermopower of quantum dots as a function of the relevant energy scales, in very good agreement with experiment.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

Nonlinear thermovoltage and thermocurrent in quantum dots

Quantum dots are model systems for quantum thermoelectric behavior because of their ability to control and measure the effects of electron-energy filtering and quantum confinement on thermoelectric properties. Interestingly, nonlinear thermoelectric properties of such small systems can modify the efficiency of thermoelectric power conversion. Using quantum dots embedded in semiconductor nanowires, we measure thermovoltage and thermocurrent that are strongly nonlinear in the applied thermal bias. We show that most of the observed nonlinear effects can be understood in terms of a renormalization of the quantum-dot energy levels as a function of applied thermal bias and provide a theoretical model of the nonlinear thermovoltage taking renormalization into account. Furthermore, we propose a theory that explains a possible source of the observed, pronounced renormalization effect by the melting of Kondo correlations in the mixed-valence regime. The ability to control nonlinear thermoelectric behavior expands the range in which quantum thermoelectric effects may be used for efficient energy conversion. © IOP Publishing and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.Financially supported by ONR, ONR Global, the Swedish Energy Agency (grant number 32920–1), the Swedish Research Council (VR), the Thai government, NSF-IGERT, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the MINECO (grant number FIS2011-23526), the Latvian Council of Science (grant number 146/2012), the National Basic Research Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (grant numbers 2012CB932703 and 2012CB932700), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 91221202) and the Nanometer Structure Consortium at Lund University (nmC@LU).Peer Reviewe

Nonlinear thermovoltage and thermocurrent in quantum dots

Quantum dots are model systems for quantum thermoelectric behavior because of their ability to control and measure the effects of electron-energy filtering and quantum confinement on thermoelectric properties. Interestingly, nonlinear thermoelectric properties of such small systems can modify the efficiency of thermoelectric power conversion. Using quantum dots embedded in semiconductor nanowires, we measure thermovoltage and thermocurrent that are strongly nonlinear in the applied thermal bias. We show that most of the observed nonlinear effects can be understood in terms of a renormalization of the quantum-dot energy levels as a function of applied thermal bias and provide a theoretical model of the nonlinear thermovoltage taking renormalization into account. Furthermore, we propose a theory that explains a possible source of the observed, pronounced renormalization effect by the melting of Kondo correlations in the mixed-valence regime. The ability to control nonlinear thermoelectric behavior expands the range in which quantum thermoelectric effects may be used for efficient energy conversion