Carrier Transport and Thermoelectric Properties of Differently Shaped Germanene (Ge) and Silicene (Si) Nanoribbon Interconnects

Abstract

Here, we report a study of carrier transport and thermoelectric properties of silicene/germanene nanoribbon (SiNR/GeNR) interconnects of varying shapes (namely, “V,” “L,” “U,” and “S” shaped) with empirical tight binding—nonequilibrium Green’s function approach. Our simulation shows that a significant reduction in both electron and phonon transmission in such differently shaped NRs compared to perfect ones. In terms of thermoelectric properties, Seebeck coefficient ( $\mathbb {S}$ ) variation in the range of −72.3 to $3.52~\mu \text{V}$ /K at 300 K for SiNR and −176 to $-\textsf {95.5}\,\,\mu \text{V}$ /K at 300 K for GeNR is observed in different pattern conditions. For Peltier coefficient ( $\pi $ ), these ranges are −0.23 to 0.001 V for SiNR and −0.053 to −0.011 V for GeNR at 300 K. Simulation also shows significant change in thermoelectric figure of merit ( $\textit {ZT}$ ) for a different pattern and temperature with peak $\textit {ZT}~0.09$ at 800 K for “U”-shaped SiNR and 0.80 at 400 K for “L”-shaped GeNR.