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arXiv · 1005.4744

A microscopic mechanism for increasing thermoelectric efficiency

Keiji Saito·Giuliano Benenti·Giulio Casati
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Abstract

We study the coupled particle and energy transport in a prototype model of interacting one-dimensional system: the disordered hard-point gas, for which numerical data suggest that the thermoelectric figure of merit ZT diverges with the system size. This result is explained in terms of a microscopic mechanism, namely the local equilibrium is characterized by the emergence of a broad stationary "modified Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution", of width much larger than the mean velocity of the particle flow.

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Keiji Saito, Giuliano Benenti, Giulio Casati. 2010-05-26. A microscopic mechanism for increasing thermoelectric efficiency. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemphys.2010.06.009

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