Effects of metallic electrodes on the thermoelectric properties of zigzag graphene nanoribbons with periodic vacancies

TL;DR

This paper theoretically investigates how metallic electrodes influence the thermoelectric properties of zigzag graphene nanoribbons with periodic vacancies, revealing that line-contacted electrodes significantly enhance performance compared to surface contact.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed theoretical analysis of thermoelectric behavior in GQDAs with different electrode contact configurations, highlighting the superior performance of line-contacted electrodes.

Findings

Line-contacted electrodes yield higher thermoelectric power factors.

GQDAs with line-contacted electrodes have figures of merit greater than three.

Surface contact results in lower thermoelectric efficiency.

Abstract

We theoretically analyze the thermoelectric properties of graphene quantum dot arrays (GQDAs) with line- or surface-contacted metal electrodes. Such GQDAs are realized as zigzag graphene nanoribbons (ZGNRs) with periodic vacancies. Gaps and minibands are formed in these GQDAs, which can have metallic and semiconducting phases. The electronic states of the first conduction (valence) miniband with nonlinear dispersion may have long coherent lengths along the zigzag edge direction. With line-contacted metal electrodes, the GQDAs have the characteristics of serially coupled quantum dots (SCQDs) if the armchair edge atoms of the ZGNRs are coupled to the electrodes. By contrast, the GQDAs have the characteristics of parallel QDs if the zigzag edge atoms are coupled to the electrodes. The maximum thermoelectric power factors of SCQDs with line-contacted electrodes of Cu, Au, Pt, Pd, or Ti at room temperature were similar or greater than $0.186~nW/K$; their figures of merit were greater than three. GQDAs with line-contacted metal electrodes have much better thermoelectric performance than surface contacted metal electrodes.