Energy cooperation in quantum thermoelectric systems with multiple electric currents

TL;DR

This paper investigates how cooperative effects in multi-terminal quantum thermoelectric systems can significantly enhance energy efficiency and power output, offering new strategies for high-performance energy conversion and refrigeration.

Contribution

It demonstrates that cooperative effects in multi-terminal thermoelectric systems can substantially improve efficiency and power, expanding the operational parameter space.

Findings

Cooperative effects improve thermoelectric performance in multi-terminal systems.

Enhanced efficiency and power output in heat engines with multiple electric currents.

Significant efficiency gains in electronic cooling schemes.

Abstract

The energy efficiency and power of a quantum thermoelectric system with multiple electric currents and only one heat currents are studied. The system is connected to the hot heat bath with one terminal but the cold bath with multiple terminals or vice versal. We find that the cooperative effects can be a potentially useful tool in improving the energy efficiency and output power in multi-terminal mesoscopic thermoelectric systems. As an example, we show that the cooperation between the two thermoelectric effects in three-terminal thermoelectric systems leads to markedly improved performance of heat engine within the linear response regime using the Landauer-B\"{u}tiker formalism. Such improvement also emerge in four-terminal thermoelectric heat engines with three output electric currents. Cooperative effects in these multi-terminal thermoelectric systems can significantly enlarge the physical parameter region with high efficiency and power. For refrigeration, we find that the energy efficiency can also be substantially improved if multi-terminal configurations are considered, suggesting a useful scheme toward electronic cooling. Our study illustrates cooperative effects as a convenient approach toward high-performance thermoelectric energy conversion in multi-terminal mesoscopic systems.