Focus on thermoelectric effects in nanostructures

Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.© 2014 IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. The field of nanoscale thermoelectrics began with a clear motivation for better performances of waste heat recovery processes by lowering the system dimensionality. Although this original inspiration still drives many recent developments, the field has also evolved to address fundamental questions on charge and energy transport across quantum conductors in the presence of both voltage and temperature differences. This 'focus on' collection provides new perspectives in the field and reports on the latest developments, both theoretically and experimentally.Peer Reviewe