High thermoelectric figure of merit in silicon-germanium superlattice structured nanowires

Abstract

By using a combination of the first-principles density functional theory and nonequilibrium Greens function for electron and phonon transport, we investigate the thermoelectric properties of silicon-germanium superlattice nanowires (NWs). Our results show that introducing superlattice structures always increases thermoelectric figure of merit, ZT, which depends on the periodic length of the superlattice NWs. For n-type superlattice NWs, the achievable maximum ZT is 4.7, which is 5-fold increase as compared to the equivalent pristine silicon NWs. For p-type wires, the achieved maximum ZT is 2.74, which is 4.6-fold increase as compared to the pristine silicon NWs. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.