A synthetic material with large thermoelectric anisotropy has been prepared from a metal–semiconductor multilayer structure. By an alloying process, a multilayer stack A–B–A…, where A and B are pure aluminum and n-silicon, is produced with a thermoelectric anisotropy ΔS=S‖−S⊥≅1.5mV∕K, where S‖ and S⊥ are the absolute Seebeck coefficients along and perpendicular to the layers, respectively. The use of this synthetic material for light sensing applications is demonstrated.

A transverse Peltier effect has been observed in artificially created tilted Pb–Bi2Te3 multilayer structures. Multilayer stacks consisting of alternating layers of Pb and n-type Bi2Te3 have been prepared by a heating procedure and showed large thermoelectric anisotropy up to ΔS≅200μV∕K, depending on thickness ratio p=dBiTe∕dPb, where dBiTe and dPb are the thicknesses of Bi2Te3 and Pb layers, respectively. Tilted samples were obtained by cutting stacks obliquely to the stack axis. Due to large ΔS and large electrical but small heat conductivity, samples showed temperature differences transverse to applied currents up to 22K.

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