Thermoelectric Effects in Nanowire-Based MOSFETs

TL;DR

This paper reviews thermoelectric effects in gated disordered nanowires, focusing on different temperature regimes, and explores their potential for energy harvesting and cooling at small scales.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of thermoelectric phenomena in nanowire-based MOSFETs across various regimes and discusses their applications in energy and thermal management.

Findings

Thermoelectric effects are large near the conduction band edges.

Electron-phonon coupling can be exploited for energy harvesting.

Multiterminal and ratchet effects are significant in the activated regime.

Abstract

We review a series of works describing thermoelectric effects in gated disordered nanowires (field effect transistor device configuration). After considering the elastic coherent regime characterizing sub-Kelvin temperatures, we study the inelastic activated regime occurring at higher temperatures, where electronic transport is dominated by phonon-assisted hops between localised states (Mott variable range hopping). The thermoelectric effects are studied as a function of the location of the Fermi level inside the nanowire conduction band, notably around its edges where they become very large. We underline the interest of using electron-phonon coupling around the band edges of large arrays of parallel nanowires for energy harvesting and hot spot cooling at small scales. Multiterminal thermoelectric transport and ratchet effects are eventually considered in the activated regime.