Energy transport in one-dimensional thermoelectric systems

The efficiency of thermoelectric power generators and the coefficient of performance of thermoelectric refrigerators increase rapidly in the region of small ZT, and then level off to a flat curve in the region of large ZT, where ZT is the figure of merit. Therefore, simply because one-dimensional thermoelectric materials have high ZT predicted theoretically does not imply that efficient thermoelectric devices can be built with such one-dimensional systems. Our numerical analysis, based on the fundamental thermodynamics which is independent of material systems, with emphasis on energy transport has confirmed this conjecture.