Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2015
Based on the Kubo-Greenwood formula, the thermoelectric effects in periodically and quasiperiodically segmented nanowires are studied by means of a real-space renormalization plus convolution method, where the electrical and lattice thermal conductivities are respectively calculated by using the tight-binding and Born models; the latter includes central and non-central interactions between nearest-neighbor atoms. The results show a significant enhancement of the thermoelectric figure-of-merit (ZT) induced by the structural disorder and/or the reduction of nanowire cross-section area. In addition, we observe a maximum ZT in both the chemical-potential and temperature spaces.