Molecular electronic refrigeration against parallel phonon heat leakage channels. Issue 30 (21st July 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Tabatabaei, Fatemeh; Merabia, Samy; Gotsmann, Bernd; Prunnila, Mika; Niehaus, Thomas A.
• Is Part Of: Nanoscale. Volume 14:Issue 30(2022)
• Page Start: 11003
• Page End: 11011
• Publication Date: 2022-07-21
• Subjects: Nanoscience -- Periodicals; Nanotechnology -- Periodicals; 620.505
• DOI: 10.1039/d2nr00529h
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2040-3364

Abstract

Abstract : Consideration of electron and phonon heat transport in OPE3 molecular junctions shows that Peltier cooling may lead to nW cooling power and refrigeration of up to 10 K. Abstract : Due to their structured density of states, molecular junctions provide rich resources to filter and control the flow of electrons and phonons. Here we compute the out of equilibrium current–voltage characteristics and dissipated heat of some recently synthesized oligophenylenes (OPE3) using the Density Functional based Tight-Binding (DFTB) method within Non-Equilibrium Green's Function Theory (NEGF). We analyze the Peltier cooling power for these molecular junctions as function of a bias voltage and investigate the parameters that lead to optimal cooling performance. In order to quantify the attainable temperature reduction, an electro-thermal circuit model is presented, in which the key electronic and thermal transport parameters enter. Overall, our results demonstrate that the studied OPE3 devices are compatible with temperature reductions of several K. Based on the results, some strategies to enable high performance devices for cooling applications are briefly discussed.