Contribution of the impurity to the thermodynamic properties of a quantum dot with a Gaussian confinement potential

In this study, the thermodynamic properties of a two-dimensional Gaussian quantum dot with a repulsive impurity are investigated theoretically. In the framework of the effective mass approximation, wave functions and corresponding energy levels are obtained by using the two-dimensional diagonalization method for solving the Schr & ouml;dinger equation, and these are used to calculate the canonical partition function. Numerical results show that the electronic energy spectrum and consequently the thermodynamic properties are significantly affected by the parameters defining the effective confinement potential and the impurity position. Furthermore, it was observed that the Schottky-like anomaly observed in the specific heat at the low-temperature limit disappeared with a decrease in the strength of the repulsive impurity potential for the impurity positioned at the center.