Methods and devices for controlling thermal conductivity and thermoelectric power of semiconductor nanowires
AssigneeCalifornia Institute of Technology
InventorsAkram BOUKAI, Yuri Bunimovich, William A. Goddard, James R. Heath, Jamil Tahir-Kheli
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Abstract
Methods and devices for controlling thermal conductivity and thermoelectric power of semiconductor nanowires are described. The thermal conductivity and the thermoelectric power are controlled substantially independently of the electrical conductivity of the nanowires by controlling dimensions and doping, respectively, of the nanowires. A thermoelectric device comprising p-doped and n-doped semiconductor nanowire thermocouples is also shown, together with a method to fabricate alternately p-doped and n-doped arrays of silicon nanowires.
Claims24
A method of controlling thermal conductivity and thermoelectric power of a material while substantially maintaining electrical conductivity of said material, comprising:
- providing semiconductor nanowires as said material;
- controlling the thermal conductivity of the semiconductor nanowires substantially independently of the electrical conductivity of the semiconductor nanowires by controlling dimensions of the semiconductor nanowires;
- and
- controlling the thermoelectric power of the semiconductor nanowires substantially independently of the electrical conductivity of the semiconductor nanowires by controlling doping of the semiconductor nanowires.
A thermoelectric device comprising p-doped and n-doped semiconductor nanowire thermocouples, said p-doped and n-doped semiconductor nanowire thermocouples being connected electrically in series and thermally in parallel.
A method to fabricate alternately p-doped and n-doped arrays of silicon nanowires, comprising:
- providing a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate;
- insulating a top silicon layer of the SOI substrate;
- coating the insulated top silicon layer with photoresist;
- patterning the photoresist into a series of isolated, alternately p-doped and n-doped, regions separated by insulator;
- removing the insulator between the isolated regions;
- etching separation regions under the removed insulator up to an insulator layer of the SOI substrate;
- removing the photoresist;
- patterning a plurality of circles on top of each isolated region;
- etching the isolated regions, the plurality of circles for each isolated region acting as a mask, to obtain, for each isolated region, a nanowire array comprising plurality of nanowires having same diameter as the circles, thus forming alternately p-doped and n-doped arrays of silicon nanowires.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.