# Powerful Coulomb-drag thermoelectric engine

## TL;DR

This paper explores a Coulomb-interaction-based thermoelectric nano-engine with decoupled charge and energy currents, demonstrating its potential for efficient energy harvesting near quantum bounds using advanced theoretical methods.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel quantum dot setup optimized for energy harvesting and analyzes its properties beyond sequential tunneling using noncrossing approximation and cotunneling-inclusive master equations.

## Key findings

- Delivered power approaches quantum bounds
- Fair efficiency achieved in the setup
- Both theoretical approaches yield similar qualitative results

## Abstract

We investigate a thermoelectric nano-engine whose properties are steered by Coulomb interaction. The device whose design decouples charge and energy currents is made up of two interacting quantum dots connected to three different reservoirs. We show that, by tailoring the tunnel couplings, this setup can be made very attractive for energy-harvesting prospects, due to a delivered power that can be of the order of the quantum bound [R. S. Whitney, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 130601 (2014); Entropy 18, 208 (2016)], with a concomitant fair efficiency. To unveil its properties beyond the sequential quantum master equation, we apply a nonequilibrium noncrossing approximation in the Keldysh Green's function formalism, and a quantum master equation that includes cotunneling processes. Both approaches are rather qualitatively similar in a large operating regime where sequential tunneling alone fails.