The Coulomb gap and low energy statistics for Coulomb glasses
We study the statistics of local energy minima in the configuration space of two-dimensional lattice Coulomb glasses with site disorder and the behavior of the Coulomb gap depending on the strength of random site energies. At intermediate disorder, i.e., when the typical strength of the disorder is of the same order as the nearest-neighbor Coulomb energy, the high energy tail of the distribution of the local minima is exponential. We furthermore analyze the structure of the local minima and show that most sites of the system have the same occupation numbers in all of these states. The density of states (DOS) shows a transition from the crystalline state at zero disorder (with a hard gap) to an intermediate, probably glassy state with a Coulomb gap. We analyze this Coulomb gap in some detail and show that the DOS deviates slightly from the traditional linear behavior in 2D. For finite systems these intermediate Coulomb gap states disappear for large disorder strengths and only a random localized state in which all electrons are in the minima of the random potential exists. Dedication: This paper is dedicated to Thomas Nattermann, our dearest friend, brilliant colleague, and outstanding teacher.
Thermoelectric performance of granular semiconductors
We study the effects of doping and confinement on the thermoelectric properties of nanocrystalline semiconductors. We calculate the thermopower and figure of merit for temperatures less than the charging energy. For weakly coupled semiconducting grains it is shown that the figure of merit is optimized for grain sizes of order 5 nm for typical materials, and that its value can be larger than one. Using the similarities between granular semiconductors and electron or Coulomb glasses allows for a quantitative description of inhomogeneous semiconducting thermoelectrics.
Liquid state 1H high field NMR in food analysis.
2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.