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Published June 2011 | Published
Journal Article Open

High thermoelectric figure of merit in heavy hole dominated PbTe

Abstract

Thermoelectric transport properties of p-type PbTe:Na, with high hole concentrations of approximately 10^(20) cm^(−3), are reinvestigated from room temperature to 750 K. The greatly enhanced Seebeck coefficient at these doping levels can be understood by the presence of a sharp increase in the density of states around the Fermi level. As a result, the thermoelectric figure of merit, zT, reaches ~1.4 at 750 K. The influence of these heavy hole carriers may contribute to a similarly high zT observed in related p-type PbTe-based systems such as Tl-doped PbTe and nanostructured composite materials.

Additional Information

© 2011 The Royal Society of Chemistry. Received 20th September 2010, Accepted 9th December 2010. First published on the web 27 Jan 2011. This work is supported by NASA-JPL and DARPA Nano Materials Program. The authors thank Alex Z. Williams and Fred Harris for careful measurements of transport properties at JPL and ZTPlus Inc.; and Norb Elsner for useful discussions and Michael Boettger for the design of the cover image.

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August 19, 2023
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