Thermoelectric Transport Across Nanoscale Polymer–Semiconductor–Polymer Junctions

Abstract

There is an increasing interest in the thermoelectric (TE) properties of hybrid organic–inorganic structures, such as molecular junctions, organic–inorganic multilayers, and nanocomposites, owing to the recent success in nanostructuring of inorganic materials for high-efficiency thermoelectrics and the ability to synthesize hybrid materials in close analog to inorganic counterparts with much lower cost and greater flexibility. Compared to inorganic counterparts, the development of hybrid inorganic-polymer structures for TE applications are in a nascent stage, where theoretical understanding is very much needed and many potential nanoscale structures are yet to be explored. In this work, we study quasi-one-dimensional TE transport in a nanoscale polymer–semiconductor–polymer (PSP) junction, where a semiconductor quantum dot (QD) is trapped between two bulk polymers with aligned polymer chains. The Holstein small polaron model, which can be used for strong electron–phonon interaction in polymers beyond the ...