Comparative study of heat-driven and power-driven refrigerators with Coulomb-coupled quantum dots

Abstract

Multi-terminal multi-dot devices have been put forward as versatile and performant setups for thermoelectric energy harvesting at the nanoscale. With a technique that encompasses and overtakes several of the usual theoretical tools used in this context, we explore a three-terminal Coulomb-coupled-dot device for refrigeration purposes. The refrigerator is monitored by either a voltage or a thermal bias. This comparative study shows that heat driven refrigerator is much underperforming than the power driven one, due to scarce on-dot charge fluctuations.