Design of low temperature thermoelectric materials with high efficiencies
Mona Zebarjadi (Rutgers University)
Prager Medal Symposium in honor of George Weng: Micromechanics, Composites and Multifunctional Materials
Mon 10:45 - 12:15
MacMillan 117
Coherent potential approximation is used to study the effect of adding doped spherical nanoparticles inside a host matrix on the thermoelectric properties. This takes into account electron multiple scatterings that are important in samples with relatively high volume fraction of nanoparticles (>1%). We show that with large fraction of uniform small size nanoparticles (1 nm), the power factor can be enhanced significantly. The improvement could be large (up to 450% for GaAs) especially at low temperatures when the mobility is limited by impurity or nanoparticle scattering. Coating nanoparticles with a properly designed layer, we show that it is possible to cloak the nanoparticles and create dopants which are invisible to conduction electrons to enhance the carrier mobility and therefore the thermoelectric power factor by two orders of magnitudes at low temperatures.