In-plane thermoelectric properties of graphene/xBN/graphene van der Waals heterostructures

Abstract

2D materials have attracted broad attention from researchers for their unique electronic proper-ties, which may be been further enhanced by combining 2D layers into vertically stacked van der Waals heterostructures. Among the superlative properties of 2D systems, thermoelectric energy (TE) conversion promises to enable targeted energy conversion, localized thermal management, and thermal sensing. However, TE conversion efficiency remains limited by the inherent tradeoff between conductivity and thermopower. In this paper, we use first-principles calculation to study graphene-based van der Waals heterostructures (vdWHs) composed of graphene layers and hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN). We compute the electronic band structures of heterostructured systems using Quantum Espresso and their thermoelectric (TE) properties using BoltzTrap2. Our results have shown that stacking layers of these 2D materials opens a bandgap, increasing it with the number of h-BN interlayers, which significantly improves the power factor (PF). We predict a PF of ~1.0x1011 W/K2.m.s for the vdWHs, nearly double compared to 5x1010 W/K2.m.s that we obtained for single-layer graphene. This study gives important information on the effect of stacking layers of 2D materials and points toward new avenues to optimize the TE properties of vdWHs.

Large thermoelectric transport in magnetically coupled CrI3/1T-MoS2 vdW heterostructure via spin–charge interconversion

“…In this regard, vdW systems with high-quality interfaces can provide a single platform to realize magnetism-derived TE behavior via the MPE. For example, previously reported non-MPE vdW heterostructures exhibit unique electronic structures with enhanced TE properties [1,6,11,[19][20][21][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42]. As compared to their individual monolayers (MLs).…”