Thermoelectric figure of merit of semiconductor superlattices

Abstract

The thermoelectric figure of merit of semiconductor superlattices has been studied in the quasi-classical one-miniband approximation. The change in the relaxation time of current carriers in 2D structures compared to their 3D analogs is taken into account when current carriers are scattered by acoustic phonons, point defects, and nonpolar optical phonons with arbitrary statistics. An analytical dependence of the figure of merit on the thermoelectric quality factor of the material and the width of the conduction miniband along the superlattice axis is established. It is shown that the figure of merit of semiconductor superlattices increases with increasing these parameters. Bibl. 14, Fig. 4.