Aspects of metallic low-temperature transport in Mott-insulator/ band-insulator superlattices: optical conductivity and thermoelectricity

TL;DR

This paper models low-temperature transport in Mott-insulator/band-insulator superlattices, matching experimental optical conductivity data and predicting thermoelectric properties, highlighting the Mott-insulating layer width as key for optimization.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical framework combining slave-boson mean-field and Boltzmann transport to analyze transport in correlated heterostructures, aligning with experimental data and exploring thermoelectric optimization.

Findings

Optical conductivity matches experimental data.

Seebeck coefficient depends strongly on Mott-insulator width.

Optimal thermoelectric power factor achievable by tuning layer width.

Abstract

We investigate the low-temperature electrical and thermal transport properties in atomically precise metallic heterostructures involving strongly-correlated electron systems. The model of the Mott-insulator/ band-insulator superlattice was discussed in the framework of the slave-boson mean-field approximation and transport quantities were derived by use of the Boltzmann transport equation in the relaxation-time approximation. The results for the optical conductivity are in good agreement with recently published experimental data on (LaTiO$_3)_N$/(SrTiO$_3)_M$ superlattices and allow us to estimate the values of key parameters of the model. Furthermore, predictions for the thermoelectric response were made and the dependence of the Seebeck coefficient on model parameters was studied in detail. The width of the Mott-insulating material was identified as the most relevant parameter, in particular, this parameter provides a way to optimize the thermoelectric power factor at low temperatures.