Enhanced thermoelectric properties of engineered graphene nano-ribbons with nano-pores

In this paper we study the thermoelectric (TE) properties of graphene nano-ribbons (GNRs) with incorporated nanopores (NPs), and present a nanopore-engineering approach for enhancing their TE properties. The nearest neighbor tight binding (TB) model and Non equilibrium Green´s function (NEGF) method were employed to obtain the electron transmission spectra. For phonon calculations, Tersoff potential along with Landaur formalism were used. We found a direct relationship between pore width and phononic thermal conductivity. The dependence of other parameters like Seebeck coefficient and electrical conductance on pore width was not so straight forward, and showed a clear dependence on the number of atoms in the side channel (NS). By optimizing NS we achieved a significant improvement in the thermoelectric figure of merit of GNRs-NPs. This research can be a route towards enhancing the TE properties of GNRs, making them potential candidates for future thermoelectronics.