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A mixed oxide (Zn1−xAlx)O exhibits promising thermoelectric properties attaining a dimensionless figure of merit ZT of 0.30 at 1000 °C, which value is much superior to other oxides and quite comparable to conventional state-of-the-art thermoelectric materials. The addition of a small amount of Al2O3 to ZnO results in a large power factor of 10–15×10−4 W/mK2, showing a marked increase in the electrical conductivity while retaining moderate thermoelectric power. A large product of the carrier mobility and density of states would be responsible for the favorable electrical properties of the present oxide. A figure of merit Z=0.24×10−3 K−1 is attained by (Zn0.98Al0.02)O at 1000 °C, even with a high thermal conductivity. A predominant proportion of the phonon thermal conductivity promises a further improvement in the thermoelectric performance by selective enhancement of phonon scattering.

Property by design is one appealing idea in material synthesis but hard to achieve in practice. A recent successful example is the demonstration of van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures, 1-3 in which atomic layers are stacked on each other and different ingredients can be combined beyond symmetry and lattice matching. This concept, usually described as a nanoscale Lego blocks, allows to build sophisticated structures layer by layer. However, this concept has been so far limited in two dimensional (2D) materials. Here we show a class of new material where different layers are coaxially (instead of planarly) stacked. As the structure is in one dimensional (1D) form, we name it "1D vdW heterostructures". We demonstrate a 5 nm diameter nanotube consisting of three different materials: an inner conductive carbon nanotube (CNT), a middle insulating hexagonal boron nitride nanotube

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