Recent experimental measurements for near-field radiative heat transfer between two bodies have been able to approach the gap distance within 2 nm, where the contributions of Coulomb fluctuation and electron's tunneling are comparable. Using the nonequilibrium Green's function method in the G0W0 approximation, based on a tight-binding model, we obtain for the energy current a Caroli formula from the Meir-Wingreen formula in the local equilibrium approximation. Also, the Caroli formula is consistent with the evanescent part of the heat transfer from the theory of fluctuational electrodynamics. We go beyond the local equilibrium approximation to study the energy transfer in the crossover region from electron tunneling to Coulomb fluctuation based on a numerical calculation.I.

Spin-dependent Seebeck effect (SDSE) is one of hot topics in spin caloritronics, which examine the relationships between spin and heat transport in materials. Meanwhile, it is still a huge challenge to obtain thermally induced spin current nearly without thermal electron current. Here, we construct a hydrogen-terminated zigzag silicene nanoribbon heterojunction, and find that by applying a temperature difference between the source and the drain, spin-up and spin-down currents are generated and flow in opposite directions with nearly equal magnitudes, indicating that the thermal spin current dominates the carrier transport while the thermal electron current is much suppressed. By modulating the temperature, a pure thermal spin current can be achieved. Moreover, a thermoelectric rectifier and a negative differential thermoelectric resistance can be obtained in the thermal electron current. Through the analysis of the spin-dependent transport characteristics, a phase diagram containing various spin caloritronic phenomena is provided. In addition, a thermal magnetoresistance, which can reach infinity, is also obtained. Our results put forward an effective route to obtain a spin caloritronic material which can be applied in future low-power-consumption technology.

It has been shown recently that the Coulomb part of electromagnetic interactions is more important than the transverse propagation waves for the near-field enhancement of heat transfer between metal objects at a distance of order nanometers. Here we present a theory focusing solely on the Coulomb potential between electrons hopping among tight-binding sites. When the relevant systems are reduced to very small geometry, for example, a single site, the enhancement is much higher compared to a collection of them packed within a distance of a few Å. We credit this to the screening effect. This result may be useful in designing metal-based metamaterials to enhance heat transfer much higher.

We report a theoretical study highlighting the thermoelectric properties of biological and synthetic DNA molecules. Based on an effective tight-binding model of duplex DNA and by using the nonequilibrium Green's function technique, the thermal conductance, electrical conductance, Seebeck coefficient and thermoelectric figure of merit in the system are numerically calculated by varying the asymmetries of energies and electronic hoppings in the backbone sites to simulate the environmental complications and fluctuations. We find that due to the multiple transport paths in the DNA molecule, the Fano antiresonance occurs, and enhances the Seebeck coefficient and the figure of merit. When the energy difference is produced in every opposite backbone site, the Dicke effect appears. This effect gives rise to a semiconducting-metallic transition, and enhances the thermoelectric efficiency of the DNA molecule remarkably. Moreover, as the Fano antiresonance point is close to the Dicke resonance one, a giant enhancement in the thermoelectric figure of merit in the DNA molecule has been found. These results provide a scenario to obtain effective routes to enhance the thermoelectric efficiency in the DNA molecules, and suggest perspectives for future experiments intending to control the thermoelectric transport in DNA-like nanodevices.