Physica E 73, 207 (2015)

ISSN: 1386-9477, SCI

Enhanced Seebeck effect in graphene devices by strain and doping engineering

M. Chung Nguyen, V. Hung Nguyen, Huy-Viet Nguyen, J. Saint-Martin, and P. Dollfus

In this work, we investigate the possibility of enhancing the thermoelectric power (Seebeck coefficient) in graphene devices by strain and doping engineering. While a local strain can result in the misalignment of Dirac cones of different graphene sections in the k-space, doping engineering leads to their displacement in energy. By combining these two effects, we demonstrate that a conduction gap as large as a few hundreds meV can be achieved and hence the enhanced Seebeck coefficient can reach a value higher than 1.4 mV/K in graphene doped heterojunctions with a locally strained area. Such hetero-channels appear to be very promising for enlarging the applications of graphene devices as in strain and thermal sensors.

DOI: 10.1016/j.physe.2015.05.020