Thermoelectric ratchet effect for charge carriers with hopping dynamics

Abstract

We show that the huge Seebeck coefficients observed recently for ionic conductors, arise from a ratchet effect where activated jumps between neighbor sites are rectified by a temperature gradient, thus driving mobile ions towards the cold. For complex systems with mobile molecules like water or polyethylene glycol, there is an even more efficient diffusiophoretic transport mechanism, proportional to the thermally induced concentration gradient of the molecular component. Without free parameters, our model describes experiments on the ionic liquid EMIM-TFSI and hydratedNaPSS, and it qualitatively accounts for polymer electrolyte membranes with Seebeck coefficients of hundreds of $k_B/e$.