Optical investigation of thermoelectric topological crystalline insulator Pb${}_{0.77}$Sn${}_{0.23}$Se

Abstract

Pb${}_{0.77}$Sn${}_{0.23}$Se is a novel alloy of two promising thermoelectric materials PbSe and SnSe that exhibits a temperature dependent band inversion below 300 K. Recent work has shown that this band inversion also coincides with a trivial to nontrivial topological phase transition. To understand how the properties critical to thermoelectric efficiency are affected by the band inversion, we measured the broadband optical response of Pb${}_{0.77}$Sn${}_{0.23}$Se as a function of temperature. We find clear optical evidence of the band inversion at $160\pm 15$ K, and use the extended Drude model to accurately determine a $T^{3/2}$ dependence of the bulk carrier lifetime, associated with electron-acoustic phonon scattering. Due to the high bulk carrier doping level, no discriminating signatures of the topological surface states are found, although their presence cannot be excluded from our data.

arXiv comment11 pages, 6 figures

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Diverse anisotropy of phonon transport in two-dimensional IV-VI compounds: A comparative study
• Absence of Magnetic Fluctuations in the Ferromagnetic/Topological Heterostructure EuS/Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$
• Observation of Ultrahigh Mobility Surface States in a Topological Crystalline Insulator by Infrared Spectroscopy
• Temperature-driven band inversion in Pb${}_{0.77}$Sn${}_{0.23}$Se: Optical and Hall-effect studies
• Nernst-Ettingshausen effect at the trivial-nontrivial band ordering in topological crystalline insulator Pb1-xSnxSe