Abstract
Metals make poor thermoelectric devices (which turn heat into electricity and vice versa) because metallic electrons and holes are almost identical in their transport properties (the so-called “electron-hole" symmetry). The traditional research of applied thermotransport properties has been therefore focused on doped semiconductors. The recent direction of research largely concentrates on mesoscopic structures and nanoscale devices. These investigations aim at improving thermoelectric performance; however, they also reveal fascinating quantum effects and pose fundamental questions. Here the speaker studies heat and charge currents through a nano device consisting of a junction bridging two electronic reservoirs. The role of inelastic processes between the charge carriers and thermal terminals (which monitor the temperature of the device) is emphasized. The main idea is to try and force electrons transported through the junction to take relatively large energy from an outer thermal bath and deliver it to another bath or to an electronic reservoir, as a heat or a charge current, attempting to achieve a significant better performance of the device.
About the speaker
Prof Ora Entin-Wohlman received her PhD from Bar-Ilan University in 1973. She was on the faculty of Tel Aviv University from 1973 to 2006, and is now Professor Emeritus there. She joined Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2003, and is currently Professor of Physics.
Prof Entin-Wohlman's research concerns the theory of condensed matter physics, especially superconductivity and nanoscience. She pioneered work on the interface between normal or magnetic and superconducting materials, on granular superconductors, on superconductivity in two-band metals, and on non-equilibrium superconductors. Recently she led the solution of the 20-year-old puzzle, concerning the large observed persistent current in copper rings. She made seminal contributions to the thoery of strongly localized vibrational modes, of the magnetoconductance of the phonon-assisted hopping electrons, of the Hall resistance and of the orbital spin-Hall effect in the hopping regime. She has published 241 research papers, including 30 in Physical Review Letters. In 2010 she edited a book on Perspectives of Mesoscopic Physics.
Prof Entin-Wohlman is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Institute of Physics, and a Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and the European Academy of Sciences.
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