Even-odd effect in the thermopower and strongly enhanced thermoelectric efficiency for superconducting single-electron transistors

2011/11/10 by Christopher Eltschka, Jens Siewert, Eltschka, Christopher +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #FOS: Physical sciences #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #cond-mat.mes-hall

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1111.2629

arxiv created 2011/11/10 · openalex publication_date 2011/11/10 · arxiv updated 2011/11/14 · openalex created_date 2016/12/08 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

It is well known that the transport properties of single-electron transistors with a superconducting island and normal-conducting leads (NSN SET) may depend on whether or not there is a single quasiparticle on the island. This parity effect has pronounced consequences for the linear transport properties. Here we analyze the thermopower of NSN SET with and without parity effect, for entirely realistic values of device parameters. Besides a marked dependence of the thermopower on the superconducting gap Δ we observe an enhancement in the parity regime which is accompanied by a dramatic increase of the thermoelectric figure of merit ZT. The latter can be explained within a simple re-interpretation of ZT in terms of averages and variances of transport energies.

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