Anomalous increase of the thermal emf in epitaxial graphene on size-quantized films

Abstract

The thermoelectric effect in epitaxial graphene formed on the surface of a size-quantized metal film is examined in the context of a Davydov model. An approach based on the Kubo formula for the conductivity and differential thermal emf is used. It is shown that because of size quantization, near the edges of the energy levels the thermal emf of epitaxial graphene increases to gigantic values of 200 μV/K, or almost a factor of seven greater than the emf of isolated graphene (about 30 μV/K).

High thermoelectric performance in excitonic bilayer graphene

“…The discovery of the very high heat conductivity in graphene has led to a great scientific interest and surges many experimental and theoretical studies [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] on the thermal and thermoelectric properties of this unusual material. The anomalous high values of thermopower have been observed also in graphene monolayer in contact with a semiconductor substrate [10,11]. Recently, the thermal properties in bilayer graphene (BLG) systems have been also under intense studies [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] owing to the plausible device applications of the bilayer graphene as well as fundamental interest in this material due to the large band gap opening comparable to those in semiconducting systems [21].…”