A microscopic mechanism for increasing thermoelectric efficiency

TL;DR

This paper investigates how microscopic interactions in a disordered one-dimensional system can lead to increased thermoelectric efficiency, revealing a microscopic mechanism that causes the figure of merit ZT to diverge with system size.

Contribution

It introduces a microscopic explanation involving a broad velocity distribution that accounts for the divergence of ZT in a disordered 1D system.

Findings

ZT diverges with system size in the disordered hard-point gas

A broad stationary velocity distribution emerges at local equilibrium

Microscopic mechanism explains thermoelectric efficiency increase

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.