Enhanced thermoelectric performance in three-dimensional superlattice of topological insulator thin films.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Fan, Zheyong Zheng, Jiansen Wang, Hui-Qiong Zheng, Jin-Cheng
Copyright Year	2012
Abstract	We show that certain three-dimensional (3D) superlattice nanostructure based on Bi2Te3 topological insulator thin films has better thermoelectric performance than two-dimensional (2D) thin films. The 3D superlattice shows a predicted peak value of ZT of approximately 6 for gapped surface states at room temperature and retains a high figure of merit ZT of approximately 2.5 for gapless surface states. In contrast, 2D thin films with gapless surface states show no advantage over bulk Bi2Te3. The enhancement of the thermoelectric performance originates from a combination of the reduction of lattice thermal conductivity by phonon-interface scattering, the high mobility of the topologically protected surface states, the enhancement of Seebeck coefficient, and the reduction of electron thermal conductivity by energy filtering. Our study shows that the nanostructure design of topological insulators provides a possible new way of ZT enhancement.
ISSN	19317573
Journal	Nanoscale Research Letters
Volume Number	7
PubMed Central reference number	PMC3724494
Issue Number	1
PubMed reference number	23072433
e-ISSN	1556276X
DOI	10.1186/1556-276x-7-570
Language	English
Publisher	Springer
Publisher Date	2012-10-16
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright ©2012 Fan et al.; licensee Springer.
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Condensed Matter Physics Materials Science