Principle for Detecting Resonant States in Thermoelectric Materials Using a Superconductor Tunneling Junction
Tóm tắt
Recent theoretical studies indicate that the existence of resonant states near the Fermi level can lead to a significant improvement in the thermoelectric figure of merit. Experimental investigation of this concept requires determination of the existence of these resonant states. In this paper, we report a theoretical calculation on the I–V characteristic of a thermoelectric/insulator/superconductor-based tunneling junction. The results show that the resonant states can be detected by measuring the I–V characteristic of such a superconducting tunneling junction, which provides a theoretical basis for development of a measurement technique to detect the resonant states for thermoelectric materials.
Tài liệu tham khảo
H.J. Van Daal, P.B.Van Aken, and K.H. Buschow, Phys. Lett. A 246 (1974).
E. Bauer, Adv. Phys. 40, 417 (1991).
D.M. Rowe, G. Min, and V.L. Kuznestsov, Phil. Mag. Lett. 77, p105 (1998).
D.M. Rowe, V.L. Kuznetsov, L.A. Kuznestsova, and G. Min, J. Phys. D Appl. Phys. 35, p2183 (2002).
G.C. Mahan and J.O. Sofo, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 93, p7436 (1996).
J.P. Heremans, V. Jovovic, E.S. Toberer, A. Saramat, K. Kurosaki, A. Charoenphakdee, S. Yamanaka, and G.J. Snyder, Science 321, p554 (2008).
M.M. Leivo, J.P. Pekola, and D.V. Averin, Appl. Phys. Lett. 68, p1996 (1996).
D. Golubev and L. Kuzmin, J. Appl. Phys. 89, p6464 (2001).
E.L. Wolf, Principle of Electron Tunneling Spectroscopy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).
L.H. Greene, W.K. Park, J.L. Sarrao, and J.D. Thompson, Phys. B 378–380, p671 (2006).
C.P. Poole Jr., H.A. Farach, R.J. Creswick, and R. Prozorov, Superconductivity, 2nd ed. (Amsterdam: Academic, 2007).