Transport properties of SnTe interpreted by means of a two valence band model

Santhanam, Suresh; Chaudhuri, A. K.

doi:10.1016/0025-5408(81)90131-8

Cited by 31 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 5 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Recently, lead-free SnTe is expected to become possible alternative of PbTe, because they have a similar rocksalt structure ( ) and electronic band structures. 4,5 However, the highest ZT of SnTe is found to be around 0.5, far below the values of ~ 2.0 for PbTe alloys. 6,7 SnTe possesses too high hole-carrier concentration (~ 10 21 /cm 3 ) due to intrinsic Sn vacancies, resulting in low Seebeck coefficients.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 75%

Enhanced thermopower in rock-salt SnTe–CdTe from band convergence

Liu

et al. 2016

RSC Adv.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

SnCdxTe materials were synthesized by the zone-melting method for the thermoelectric performance study. The X-ray diffraction results show that the lattice parameter decreases with increasing x, following the Vegard's law of rock-salt structure SnTe and CdTe. Besides, the room temperature Seebeck coefficients of the SnCdxTe system enhance to > 60 μV/K, larger than those of Cd-doped SnTe synthesized by spark plasma sintering. A large power factor of ~ 25 μW/cmK is achieved in SnCd0.12Te at 820 K, which rivals those of high performance PbTe-based materials. As a result, the highest ZT of ~1.03 at 820 K was achieved for SnCd0.12Te.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 75%

Enhanced thermopower in rock-salt SnTe–CdTe from band convergence

Liu

et al. 2016

RSC Adv.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Tin telluride (SnTe), a lead-free IV-VI narrow band-gap semiconductor has not been considered favorably as a good thermoelectric material because of its low ZT due to the relatively low Seebeck coefficient and high electronic thermal conductivity caused by intrinsic Sn vacancies (11)(12)(13), although SnTe has been used to alloy with other tellurides for better TE properties (14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26). Even though there has been no real success in achieving good TE properties of lead-free SnTe, the similarity between the electronic band structure of SnTe and that of PbTe and PbSe (27)(28)(29)(30)(31) suggests it has the potential to be a good TE material, especially given the two valence bands (light-hole and heavy-hole bands) that contribute to the hole density of states. The main difficulty here, however, is the fact that the separation between the light-hole and heavy-hole band edges in SnTe is estimated to be in the range of ∼0.3 to ∼0.4 eV (27,29), larger than those of PbTe or PbSe (9), rendering the benefit of the heavier mass for the Seebeck coefficient less significant.…”

Section: G Ood Thermoelectric (Te) Materials Should Not Only Have Highmentioning

confidence: 99%

High thermoelectric performance by resonant dopant indium in nanostructured SnTe

Zhang

Liao

Lan

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

660

765

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

From an environmental perspective, lead-free SnTe would be preferable for solid-state waste heat recovery if its thermoelectric figure-of-merit could be brought close to that of the leadcontaining chalcogenides. In this work, we studied the thermoelectric properties of nanostructured SnTe with different dopants, and found indium-doped SnTe showed extraordinarily large Seebeck coefficients that cannot be explained properly by the conventional two-valence band model. We attributed this enhancement of Seebeck coefficients to resonant levels created by the indium impurities inside the valence band, supported by the firstprinciples simulations. This, together with the lower thermal conductivity resulting from the decreased grain size by ball milling and hot pressing, improved both the peak and average nondimensional figure-of-merit (ZT) significantly. A peak ZT of ∼1.1 was obtained in 0.25 atom % In-doped SnTe at about 873 K.

show abstract

“…PbTe [28][29][30] and SnTe [31][32][33][34] both have a higher-energy L and a lower-energy Σ valence band. In pristine materials with optimized carrier concentrations, the lower-energy offset between these two bands in PbTe (0.17 eV 29,30,35 at 300 K) compared with that in SnTe (0.3-0.4 eV 32,34 at 300 K) leads to a much higher-power factor (30 μW cm − 1 K − 2 36 ) for PbTe than that for SnTe (20 μW cm − 1 K − 2 37 ). For GeTe, the available literature shows a power factor of ∼ 40 μW cm − 1 K − 2 , [38][39][40][41] which is the highest among the three compounds.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electronic origin of the high thermoelectric performance of GeTe among the p-type group IV monotellurides

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

PbTe and SnTe in their p-type forms have long been considered high-performance thermoelectrics, and both of them largely rely on two valence bands (the first band at L point and the second one along the Σ line) participating in the transport properties. This work focuses on the thermoelectric transport properties inherent to p-type GeTe, a member of the group IV monotellurides that is relatively less studied. Approximately 50 GeTe samples have been synthesized with different carrier concentrations spanning from 1 to 20 × 10 20 cm − 3 , enabling an insightful understanding of the electronic transport and a full carrier concentration optimization for the thermoelectric performance. When all of these three monotellurides (PbTe, SnTe and GeTe) are fully optimized in their p-type forms, GeTe shows the highest thermoelectric figure of merit (zT up to 1.8). This is due to its superior electronic performance, originating from the highly degenerated Σ band at the band edge in the low-temperature rhombohedral phase and the smallest effective masses for both the L and Σ bands in the high-temperature cubic phase. The high thermoelectric performance of GeTe that is induced by its unique electronic structure not only provides a reference substance for understanding existing research on GeTe but also opens new possibilities for the further improvement of the thermoelectric performance of this material.

show abstract

Transport properties of SnTe interpreted by means of a two valence band model

Cited by 31 publications

References 5 publications

Enhanced thermopower in rock-salt SnTe–CdTe from band convergence

Enhanced thermopower in rock-salt SnTe–CdTe from band convergence

High thermoelectric performance by resonant dopant indium in nanostructured SnTe

Electronic origin of the high thermoelectric performance of GeTe among the p-type group IV monotellurides

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About