Effect of impurities on charge and heat transport in tubular nanowires

Hadi Rezaie Heris; K O Klausen; Anna Sitek; Sigurdur I Erlingsson; Andrei Manolescu

doi:10.1088/1361-6528/acd062

Effect of impurities on charge and heat transport in tubular nanowires

Nanotechnology. 2023 Jun 1;34(33). doi: 10.1088/1361-6528/acd062.

Authors

Hadi Rezaie Heris¹, K O Klausen¹, Anna Sitek², Sigurdur I Erlingsson¹, Andrei Manolescu¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Engineering, Reykjavik University, Menntavegur 1, IS-102 Reykjavik, Iceland.
² Department of Theoretical Physics, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Wybrzeże Wyspiańskiego 27, 50-370 Wroclaw, Poland.

PMID: 37100052
DOI: 10.1088/1361-6528/acd062

Abstract

We calculate the charge and heat currents carried by electrons, originating from a temperature gradient and a chemical potential difference between the two ends of tubular nanowires with different geometries of the cross-sectional areas: circular, square, triangular, and hexagonal. We consider nanowires based on InAs semiconductor material, and use the Landauer-Büttiker approach to calculate the transport quantities. We include impurities in the form of delta scatterers and compare their effect for different geometries. The results depend on the quantum localization of the electrons along the edges of the tubular prismatic shell. For example, the effect of impurities on the charge and heat transport is weaker in the triangular shell than in the hexagonal shell, and the thermoelectric current in the triangular case is several times larger than in the hexagonal case, for the same temperature gradient.

Keywords: electron localization; heat transport; polygonal cross-section; thermoelectric current; tubular nanowires.