Enhancement of thermoelectric efficiency in non-uniform semiconductor nanowires

Thermoelectric efficiency has been limited to a non-practical range because of the electronic material properties that are not easily controlled. Therefore, limiting thermal transport has been the best approach to enhance efficiency, and efforts to reduce the thermal conductivity even further have been extensively reported. In this work, we investigate thermoelectric transport coefficients of uniformly straight and sinusoidally undulated nanowires and compare the resulting thermoelectric figure-of-merit. The improved efficiency should suggest another strategy to effectively control thermal transport in semiconductor nanostructures.