Power generation with nanowire resonant tunneling thermoelectrics

Nanowires have been predicted to yield significantly improved thermoelectric figures of merit. Here we describe the electron energy spectrum of a resonant tunneling heterostructure nanowire in detail and show how it may be used to realize energy filtering for thermoelectric electronic efficiencies approaching the Carnot limit. A proof-of-principle experiment is described that seeks to demonstrate such idealized electronic properties.