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- Title
Tunable quantum gaps to decouple carrier and phonon transport leading to high-performance thermoelectrics.
- Authors
Yu, Yong; Xu, Xiao; Wang, Yan; Jia, Baohai; Huang, Shan; Qiang, Xiaobin; Zhu, Bin; Lin, Peijian; Jiang, Binbin; Liu, Shixuan; Qi, Xia; Pan, Kefan; Wu, Di; Lu, Haizhou; Bosman, Michel; Pennycook, Stephen J.; Xie, Lin; He, Jiaqing
- Abstract
Thermoelectrics enable direct heat-to-electricity transformation, but their performance has so far been restricted by the closely coupled carrier and phonon transport. Here, we demonstrate that the quantum gaps, a class of planar defects characterized by nano-sized potential wells, can decouple carrier and phonon transport by selectively scattering phonons while allowing carriers to pass effectively. We choose the van der Waals gap in GeTe-based materials as a representative example of the quantum gap to illustrate the decoupling mechanism. The nano-sized potential well of the quantum gap in GeTe-based materials is directly visualized by in situ electron holography. Moreover, a more diffused distribution of quantum gaps results in further reduction of lattice thermal conductivity, which leads to a peak ZT of 2.6 at 673 K and an average ZT of 1.6 (323–723 K) in a GeTe system. The quantum gap can also be engineered into other thermoelectrics, which provides a general method for boosting their thermoelectric performance. Defects are believed to always scatter carriers. Here, the authors find that the quantum gaps in GeTe-based materials do not scatter carriers, which decouple the carriers and phonons transport leading to high thermoelectric performance.
- Subjects
PHONONS; PHONON scattering; ELECTRON holography; QUANTUM wells; POTENTIAL well; THERMAL conductivity
- Publication
Nature Communications, 2022, Vol 13, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
2041-1723
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1038/s41467-022-33330-9