Polarization-induced giant thermoelectric effect in monolayer MoS2

Abstract

The authors investigate the influence of local polarization on the thermoelectric properties of monolayer MoS2 using a tight-binding approach. It is found that strain-induced polarization in armchair monolayer MoS2 can be easily embedded to strongly enhance the thermoelectric efficiency ZT for quantum wells. The structure we proposed can achieve a figure of merit ZT of 0.8 at room temperature in an armchair MoS2 nanoribbon, and ZT achieves 1 at 500 K. The results facilitate insight and understanding of strain modulated thermoelectric properties of monolayer MoS2 nanodevices, provide theoretical guidance for experiments, and indicate their great potential in thermoelectric devices.