Enhanced thermoelectric properties of engineered graphene nano-ribbons with nano-pores

Abstract

In this paper we study the thermoelectric (TE) properties of graphene nano-ribbons (GNRs) with incorporated nanopores (NPs), and present a nanopore-engineering approach for enhancing their TE properties. The nearest neighbor tight binding (TB) model and Non equilibrium Green's function (NEGF) method were employed to obtain the electron transmission spectra. For phonon calculations, Tersoff potential along with Landaur formalism were used. We found a direct relationship between pore width and phononic thermal conductivity. The dependence of other parameters like Seebeck coefficient and electrical conductance on pore width was not so straight forward, and showed a clear dependence on the number of atoms in the side channel (NS). By optimizing NS we achieved a significant improvement in the thermoelectric figure of merit of GNRs-NPs. This research can be a route towards enhancing the TE properties of GNRs, making them potential candidates for future thermoelectronics.