Disentangling the magnetoelectric and thermoelectric transport in topological insulator thin films

Abstract

We report transport studies on (Bi,Sb)2Te3 topological insulator thin films with tunable electronic band structure. We find a doping and temperature regime in which the Hall coefficient is negative indicative of electron-type carriers, whereas the Seebeck coefficient is positive indicative of hole-type carriers. This sign anomaly is due to the distinct transport behaviors of the bulk and surface states: the surface Dirac fermions dominate magnetoelectric transport while the thermoelectric effect is mainly determined by the bulk states. These findings may inspire new ideas for designing topological insulator-based high efficiency thermoelectric devices.

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References in corpus (3)

• Discovery (theoretical prediction and experimental observation) of a large-gap topological-insulator class with spin-polarized single-Dirac-cone on the surface
• Enhanced Thermoelectric Performance and Anomalous Seebeck Effects in Topological Insulators
• Topological insulators and thermoelectric materials

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Topological quantum materials from the viewpoint of chemistry
• Weak Localization and Antilocalization in Topological Materials with Impurity Spin-Orbit Interactions
• Thermoelectric Effects and Topological Insulators
• Coulomb drag in topological materials
• Ultrathin film of 3D topological insulators by vapor-phase epitaxy: Surface dominant transport in wide temperature revealed by Seebeck measurement
• Topological Aspects of Antiferromagnets