Thermoelectric transport in ${\text{Bi}}_2{\text{Te}}_3/{\text{Sb}}_2{\text{Te}}_3$ superlattices

Abstract

The thermoelectric transport properties of ${\text{Bi}}_2{\text{Te}}_3/{\text{Sb}}_2{\text{Te}}_3$superlattices are analyzed on the basis of first-principles calculations and semi-classical Boltzmann theory. The anisotropy of the thermoelectric transport under electron and hole-doping was studied in detail for different superlattice periods at changing temperature and charge carrier concentrations. A clear preference for thermoelectric transport under hole-doping, as well as for the in-plane transport direction was found for all superlattice periods. At hole-doping the electrical transport anisotropies remain bulk-like for all investigated systems, while under electron-doping quantum confinement leads to strong suppression of the cross-plane thermoelectric transport at several superlattice periods. In addition, insights on the Lorenz function, the electronic contribution to the thermal conductivity and the resulting figure of merit are given.

References in corpus (2)

• Localization and delocalization errors in density functional theory and implications for band-gap prediction
• Thermal conductivity of GeTe/Sb${}_2$Te${}_3$ superlattices measured by coherent phonon spectroscopy

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