https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2014-40979-5
Regular Article
Thermoelectric figure of merit in a quantum wire coupled to a graphene sheet between ferromagnetic leads
1 Department of Physics, Shaoyang
University, Shaoyang
422001, P.R.
China
2 Department of Physics and Key
Laboratory for Low-Dimensional Structures and Quantum Manipulation (Ministry of
Education), Hunan Normal University, Changsha
410081, P.R.
China
a
e-mail: zhoubenhu@163.com
Received:
4
November
2013
Received in final form:
13
February
2014
Published online:
23
April
2014
We theoretically investigate the figure of merit ZT for a quantum wire side-coupled by a graphene sheet and sandwiched between two ferromagnetic electrodes with noncollinear magnetic moments. By using the nonequilibrium Green’s function combining with the tight-binding Hamiltonian, we demonstrate that the ZT for the system develops an oscillating behavior and weakly depends on the wire-graphene coupling strength as well as magnetic configuration of the leads. On the contrary, it is strongly dependent on temperature and the polarization strength of the leads. Importantly, the maximum value of ZT for the system without the polarization strength (p = 0) is about 1.1 at temperature kBT = 0.015Γ0, which is in agreement with the experimental measurements for silicon nanowires.
Key words: Mesoscopic and Nanoscale Systems
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 2014