Thermoelectric transport of perfectly conducting channels in two- and three-dimensional topological insulators

TL;DR

This paper investigates how perfectly conducting edge and dislocation states in topological insulators influence thermoelectric properties and explores their potential to enhance thermoelectric efficiency.

Contribution

It demonstrates the impact of topologically protected conducting channels on thermoelectric performance and discusses strategies to improve the figure of merit using these states.

Findings

Perfectly conducting channels significantly enhance thermoelectric transport.

Topological insulators' unique states can be exploited to improve thermoelectric efficiency.

Potential methods to optimize thermoelectric figure of merit using topological states.

Abstract

Topological insulators have gapless edge/surface states with novel transport properties. Among these, there are two classes of perfectly conducting channels which are free from backscattering: the edge states of two-dimensional topological insulators and the one-dimensional states localized on dislocations of certain three-dimensional topological insulators. We show how these novel states affect thermoelectric properties of the systems and discuss possibilities to improve the thermoelectric figure of merit using these materials with perfectly conducting channels.