Thermoelectric Performance of 2D Tellurium with Accumulation Contacts

Tellurium (Te) is an intrinsically p-type doped narrow bandgap semiconductor with excellent electrical conductivity and low thermal conductivity. Bulk trigonal Te has been theoretically predicted and experimentally demonstrated to be an outstanding thermoelectric material with high value of thermoel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inarXiv.org
Main Authors Qiu, Gang, Huang, Shouyuan, Segovia, Mauricio, Venuthurumilli, Prabhu K, Wang, Yixiu, Wu, Wenzhuo, Xu, Xianfan, Ye, Peide D
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published Ithaca Cornell University Library, arXiv.org 26.12.2018
Subjects
Accumulation
Coolers
Devices
Electric contacts
Electrical resistivity
Energy harvesting
Laser beam heating
Mapping
P-type semiconductors
Palladium
Power efficiency
Power factor
Tellurium
Thermal conductivity
Thermoelectric materials
Thermoelectricity
Thin films
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Summary:Tellurium (Te) is an intrinsically p-type doped narrow bandgap semiconductor with excellent electrical conductivity and low thermal conductivity. Bulk trigonal Te has been theoretically predicted and experimentally demonstrated to be an outstanding thermoelectric material with high value of thermoelectric figure-of-merit ZT. In view of the recent progress in developing synthesis route of two-dimensional (2D) tellurium thin films as well as the growing trend of exploiting nanostructures as thermoelectric devices, here for the first time we report excellent thermoelectric performance of tellurium nanofilms, with room temperature power factor of 31.7 {\mu}Wcm-1K-2 and ZT value of 0.63. To further enhance the efficiency of harvesting thermoelectric power in nanofilm devices, thermoelectrical current mapping was performed with a laser as a heating source, and we found high work function metals such as palladium can form rare accumulation-type metal-to-semiconductor contacts to 2D Te, which allows thermoelectrically generated carriers to be collected more efficiently. High-performance thermoelectric 2D Te devices have broad applications as energy harvesting devices or nanoscale Peltier coolers in microsystems.
ISSN:2331-8422