Eur. Phys. J. B (2014) 87: 244
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2014-50312-1

Regular Article

Electron interaction effects on the thermoelectric power of a quantum dot at T > T_K

¹ Department of Physics, Shaoxing University, Shaoxing 312000, P.R. China
² School of Mathematics and Physics, Shanghai University of Electric Power, Shanghai 200090, P.R. China
³ Key Laboratory for Advanced Microstructure Materials of the Ministry of Education and Department of Physics, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, P.R. China

^a e-mail: yhyan@fudan.edu.cn

Received: 18 May 2014
Received in final form: 9 July 2014
Published online: 22 October 2014

Abstract

In the absence of phonon thermal conductivity, we theoretically investigate the output power of an interacting quantum dot thermoelectric setup that is moderately coupled to two electronic reservoirs in the regime T ≫ T_K. In the noninteracting case, the output power is maximized when the energy level of the dot is around a critical value ε_c. We find that when the energy level of the dot is lower than ε_c, Coulomb interaction can enhance the maximum thermoelectric power that can be achieved by tuning the bias and a wider operating region is also observed. However, when the energy level of the dot is higher than ε_c, Coulomb interaction suppresses the maximum power. Finally when the dot level is around ε_c, Coulomb interaction has minimal effects on the maximum power.