Highly efficient quantum heat engine operating at maximum power in a silicene based antiferromagnetic/ferromagnetic junction

Abstract Due to the promising applications in energy harvesting, quantum heat engines at the nanoscale has attracted much interest in the past decades. Here the thermoelectric properties of a silicene based antiferromagnetic/ferromagnetic junction are investigated. The maximum power P m a x and the efficiency at maximum power η ( P m a x ) can be modulated by the gate voltage V g , and be comparable to or even better than that of recent proposals based on two terminal graphene system. In addition, because of the specific spin and valley dependent band-matching tunneling mechanism, there exists a plateau in the P m a x ( η ( P m a x ) ) versus V g curves, which is sensitive to T and vanishes at high T . This indicates the silicene junction can operate as a highly efficient quantum heat engine.