Effect of Impurities on Charge and Heat Transport in Tubular Nanowires

TL;DR

This study investigates how impurities affect charge and heat transport in tubular nanowires of various geometries, revealing geometry-dependent differences in impurity impact and thermoelectric performance.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of impurity effects on transport in nanowires with different cross-sectional shapes using the Landauer-Büttiker approach.

Findings

Impurities have a weaker effect on transport in triangular shells compared to hexagonal shells.

Thermoelectric current is significantly larger in triangular nanowires than in hexagonal ones under the same conditions.

Transport properties depend on quantum localization along the edges of the nanowires.

Abstract

We calculate the charge and heat currents carried by electrons, originating from a temperature gradient and a chemical potential difference between the two ends of tubular nanowires with different geometries of the cross-sectional areas: circular, square, triangular, and hexagonal. We consider nanowires based on InAs semiconductor material, and use the Landauer-B\"{u}ttiker approach to calculate the transport quantities. We include impurities in the form of delta scatterers and compare their effect for different geometries. The results depend on the quantum localization of the electrons along the edges of the tubular prismatic shell. For example, the effect of impurities on the charge and heat transport is weaker in the triangular shell than in the hexagonal shell, and the thermoelectric current in the triangular case is several times larger than in the hexagonal case, for the same temperature gradient.