High-Efficiency Van Der Waals heterostructure Thermionic Device With Graphene Electrodes

TL;DR

This paper introduces a van der Waals heterostructure thermionic device utilizing graphene electrodes and 2D materials, achieving high efficiency for cooling and power generation between 300-400 K.

Contribution

It proposes a novel heterostructure design with low thermal conductivity barriers and graphene electrodes, demonstrating superior efficiency over traditional thermionic and thermoelectric devices.

Findings

Cooling efficiency exceeds 50% of Carnot limit.

Power generation efficiency reaches 10-20% at 400 K.

Device design is feasible with current technology.

Abstract

In this paper, we propose van del Waals heterostructure-based thermionic devices for the applications in cooling and power generation in the temperature range of 300 to 400 K. By using two-dimensional materials of low cross-plane thermal conductivity as the barrier materials and graphene as electrodes, our calculation demonstrates that our proposed device will have a higher efficiency as compared to other methods such as thermoelectric device and the traditional thermionic devices. By using the parameters within the current technology, we predict a cooling capability at more than 50$\%$ of the Carnot efficiency, and a 10 to 20 $\%$ efficiency in harvesting the wasted heat at 400 K.