Abstract
A method of improving the efficiency of thermoelectric energy conversion by utilizing potential barriers is considered. Since potential barriers act as carrier energy filters, elimination of lower energy carriers results in an improvement of the efficiency of thermoelectric energy conversion (energy filtering method). The optimal height of potential barriers and the distance between the barriers is estimated within a semiclassical framework, i.e. using Boltzmann equation. Our calculated results show that this method works effectively for materials, in which acoustic phonon scattering is dominant compared with other scattering processes.
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