Energy cooperation in quantum thermoelectric systems with multiple electric currents

Abstract

The energy efficiency and power of a quantum thermoelectric system with multiple electric currents and only one heat currents are studied. The system is connected to the hot heat bath with one terminal but the cold bath with multiple terminals or vice versal. We find that the cooperative effects can be a potentially useful tool in improving the energy efficiency and output power in multi-terminal mesoscopic thermoelectric systems. As an example, we show that the cooperation between the two thermoelectric effects in three-terminal thermoelectric systems leads to markedly improved performance of heat engine within the linear response regime using the Landauer-Bütiker formalism. Such improvement also emerge in four-terminal thermoelectric heat engines with three output electric currents. Cooperative effects in these multi-terminal thermoelectric systems can significantly enlarge the physical parameter region with high efficiency and power. For refrigeration, we find that the energy efficiency can also be substantially improved if multi-terminal configurations are considered, suggesting a useful scheme toward electronic cooling. Our study illustrates cooperative effects as a convenient approach toward high-performance thermoelectric energy conversion in multi-terminal mesoscopic systems.