Thermosize voltage induced in a ballistic graphene nanoribbon junction

Abstract

A thermoelectric voltage is induced in a junction, constituted of two dissimilar materials under a temperature gradient. Similarly, a thermosize voltage is expected to be induced in a junction made by the same material but having different sizes, so-called thermosize junction. This is a consequence of dissimilarity in Seebeck coefficients due to differences in classical and/or quantum size effects in the same materials with different sizes. The studies on thermosize effects in the literature are mainly based on semiclassical models under relaxation time approximation or even simpler local equilibrium ones where only very general ideas and results have been discussed without considering quantum transport approaches and specific materials. To make more realistic predictions for a possible experimental verification, here we consider ballistic thermosize junctions made by narrow and wide (n−w) pristine graphene nanoribbons with perfect armchair edges and calculate the electronic contribution to the thermosize voltage, at room temperature, by using the Landauer formalism. The results show that the maximum thermosize voltage can be achieved for semiconducting nanoribbons and it is about an order of magnitude larger than that of metallic nanoribbons. In the semiconducting case, the thermosize voltage forms a characteristic plateau for a finite range of gating conditions. We demonstrate, through numerical calculations, that the induced thermosize voltage per temperature difference can be in the scale of mV/K, which is high enough for experimental measurements. Owing to their high and persistent thermosize voltage values, graphene nanoribbons are expected to be good candidates for device applications of thermosize effects.