A microscopic mechanism for increasing thermoelectric efficiency

Keiji Saito; Giuliano Benenti; Giulio Casati

doi:10.1016/j.chemphys.2010.06.009

A microscopic mechanism for increasing thermoelectric efficiency

Keiji Saito, Giuliano Benenti, Giulio Casati

Department of Physics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

25 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We study the coupled particle and energy transport in a prototype model of interacting one-dimensional system: the disordered hard-point gas, for which numerical data suggest that the thermoelectric figure of merit ZT diverges with the system size. This result is explained in terms of a microscopic mechanism, namely the local equilibrium is characterized by the emergence of a broad stationary "modified Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution", of width much larger than the mean velocity of the particle flow.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	508-513
Number of pages	6
Journal	Chemical Physics
Volume	375
Issue number	2-3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemphys.2010.06.009
Publication status	Published - 2010 Oct 5

Keywords

Nonlinear dynamics
Onsager coefficients
Thermoelectricity

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Physics and Astronomy(all)
Physical and Theoretical Chemistry

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AU - Casati, Giulio

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