Using Activated Transport in Parallel Nanowires for Energy Harvesting and Hot Spot Cooling

Abstract

We study arrays of parallel doped semiconductor nanowires in a temperature range where the electrons propagate through the nanowires by phonon assisted hops between localized states. By solving the Random Resistor Network problem, we compute the thermopower $S$, the electrical conductance $G$, and the electronic thermal conductance $K^e$ of the device. We investigate how those quantities depend on the position -- which can be tuned with a back gate -- of the nanowire impurity band with respect to the equilibrium electrochemical potential. We show that large power factors can be reached near the band edges, when $S$ self-averages to large values while $G$ is small but scales with the number of wires. Calculating the amount of heat exchanged locally between the electrons inside the nanowires and the phonons of the environment, we show that phonons are mainly absorbed near one electrode and emitted near the other when a charge current is driven through the nanowires near their band edges. This phenomenon could be exploited for a field control of the heat exchange between the phonons and the electrons at submicron scales in electronic circuits. It could be also used for cooling hot spots.