Thermal transport in individual thermoelectric nanowires: a review

Abstract

Extensive research efforts have been devoted to nanowires because of their novel electronic, optical and thermoelectric properties due to spatial confinement in two dimensions. Among various fields, nanowires have been of interest in the thermoelectric community not only for their novel thermoelectric properties but also for their ease of use in fundamental scientific studies as the physics learned using nanowires can be applied in bulk thermoelectric nanocomposites. In this paper, we limit our discussion to experimental thermal transport in thermoelectric nanowires such as Bi-Te, Pb-Te and Si-Ge nanowires. After reviewing the reasons why nanowires are of interest in the thermoelectric community, we discuss various synthesis methods and thermal transport measurements. Next, we evaluated how thermal transport in nanowires is affected by various scattering mechanisms such as phonon boundary scattering, alloy scattering, etc. We also discuss a recent study concerning how the surface roughness affects phonon transport. This article is useful to gain insight into how to manage thermal transport in various applications.

Block copolymer–nanoparticle composites: Structure, functional properties, and processing

“…For example, below a certain critical size (such as the electron mean free path for metallic NPs) NPs can possess some novel properties due to quantum confinement effect. Nanoparticle properties have been studied extensively [163][164][165][166][167][168][169]. The incorporation of nanoparticles into block copolymer matrices can improve existing properties or impart new properties such as mechanical [26,[170][171][172][173][174][175][176][177][178][179][180][181], optical [182], electrical [170,181,[183][184][185][186][187][188], photovoltaic, thermal [149,[189][190][191][192], and barrier [17].…”

Synthesis and characterisation of PbTe thermoelectric nanopowders via a gas induced reduction route

“…It has been experimentally shown that low dimensional thermoelectric materials (superlattices and nanowires) have much enhanced ZT values, 2,3 due to quantum confinement effect and strong phonon boundary scattering. 4 Hence, PbTe nanostructures have recently attracted much attention and been successfully fabricated by many methods, such as solvothermal/hydrothermal synthesis, 5 high temperature solution phase synthesis, 6 chemical bath 7 and thermal evaporation. 8 And various PbTe nanostructures including nanoparticles, 9 nanocubes, 10,11 nanowires or nanorods 12 have been synthesised.…”

Effect of annealing temperature on microstructure and thermoelectric properties of bismuth–telluride multilayer thin films prepared by magnetron sputtering

“…1 Thermoelectric semiconductor materials have some excellent properties, including the lack of noise or moving parts, long lifetime and maintenance-free use. 2 A non-dimensional figure of merit, ZT, which is a direct indication of the thermal efficiency of a power generation device and coefficient of performance for refrigeration devices 3 can be expressed as follows:…”