Enhancement of the thermoelectric figure of merit in a quantum dot due to the Coulomb blockade effect

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that Coulomb interactions in quantum dots can significantly enhance their thermoelectric efficiency, with the figure of merit exceeding 5 under typical conditions.

Contribution

It reveals how Coulomb blockade effects increase the thermoelectric figure of merit in quantum dots by enlarging effective level spacing and reducing bipolar suppression.

Findings

High ZT (>5) achievable with Coulomb interaction in quantum dots.

Coulomb blockade suppresses bipolar effect, enhancing thermoelectric performance.

Multiple energy levels and Coulomb effects are crucial for optimizing ZT.

Abstract

We investigate the figure of merit of a quantum dot (QD) in the Coulomb blockade regime. It is found that the figure of merit $ZT$ may be quite high if only single energy level in the QD is considered. On the other hand, with two or multi energy levels in the QD and without the Coulomb interaction, the $ZT$ is strongly suppressed by the bipolar effect due to small level spacing. However, in the presence of the Coulomb interaction, the effective level spacing is enlarged and the bipolar effect is weakened, resulting in $ZT$ to be considerably high. Thus, it is more likely to find a high efficient thermoelectric QDs with large Coulomb interaction. By using the parameters for a typical QD, the $ZT$ can reach over 5.