Numerical study of the thermoelectric power factor in ultra-thin Si nanowires

TL;DR

This study uses atomistic modeling to analyze how quantum confinement and orientation affect the thermoelectric power factor in ultra-thin silicon nanowires, revealing potential for performance optimization at diameters below 7nm.

Contribution

It introduces a coupled ballistic and diffusive transport modeling approach for large atomistic silicon nanowires, providing insights into power factor optimization strategies.

Findings

Power factor enhancement observed below ~7nm diameter.

Quantum confinement and orientation influence thermoelectric performance.

Methodology applicable to large-scale nanostructure simulations.

Abstract

Low dimensional structures have demonstrated improved thermoelectric (TE) performance because of a drastic reduction in their thermal conductivity, {\kappa}l. This has been observed for a variety of materials, even for traditionally poor thermoelectrics such as silicon. Other than the reduction in {\kappa}l, further improvements in the TE figure of merit ZT could potentially originate from the thermoelectric power factor. In this work, we couple the ballistic (Landauer) and diffusive linearized Boltzmann electron transport theory to the atomistic sp3d5s*-spin-orbit-coupled tight-binding (TB) electronic structure model. We calculate the room temperature electrical conductivity, Seebeck coefficient, and power factor of narrow 1D Si nanowires (NWs). We describe the numerical formulation of coupling TB to those transport formalisms, the approximations involved, and explain the differences in the conclusions obtained from each model. We investigate the effects of cross section size, transport orientation and confinement orientation, and the influence of the different scattering mechanisms. We show that such methodology can provide robust results for structures including thousands of atoms in the simulation domain and extending to length scales beyond 10nm, and point towards insightful design directions using the length scale and geometry as a design degree of freedom. We find that the effect of low dimensionality on the thermoelectric power factor of Si NWs can be observed at diameters below ~7nm, and that quantum confinement and different transport orientations offer the possibility for power factor optimization.