Enhanced Thermoelectric Performance and Anomalous Seebeck Effects in Topological Insulators
Enhanced Thermoelectric Performance and Anomalous Seebeck Effects in Topological Insulators
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DOI：
10.1103/physrevlett.112.226801
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发表时间：
2014-06-02
影响因子：
8.6
通讯作者：
Zhang, Shou-Cheng
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Xu, Yong;Gan, Zhongxue;Zhang, Shou-Cheng
提高热电优值zT是材料科学中最大的挑战之一。最近拓扑绝缘体的发现为这一前景提供了新的希望。在这项工作中，我们从理论上证明，zT是强烈的大小依赖于TI，和大小参数可以调整，以提高zT显着大于1。此外，我们表明，在TI的边缘状态的寿命是强烈的能量依赖性，导致大的和异常的Seebeck效应与霍尔效应相反的符号。这些惊人的性能使TI成为热电科学和技术的一种有前途的材料。
Improving the thermoelectric figure of merit zT is one of the greatest challenges in material science. The recent discovery of topological insulators (TIs) offers new promise in this prospect. In this work, we demonstrate theoretically that zT is strongly size dependent in TIs, and the size parameter can be tuned to enhance zT to be significantly greater than 1. Furthermore, we show that the lifetime of the edge states in TIs is strongly energy dependent, leading to large and anomalous Seebeck effects with an opposite sign to the Hall effect. These striking properties make TIs a promising material for thermoelectric science and technology.