Thermoelectric and galvanomagnetic properties of bismuth chalcogenide nanostructured hetero-epitaxial films

TL;DR

This study investigates the thermoelectric and galvanomagnetic properties of nanostructured bismuth chalcogenide films grown on mica, revealing unique scattering mechanisms that could improve their thermoelectric performance.

Contribution

It presents a novel analysis of charge carrier scattering in nanostructured Bi2Te3 and BiSbTe3 films, highlighting effects of interfaces and boundaries on transport properties.

Findings

Charge carriers experience additional scattering at interfaces and boundaries.

The scattering mechanism differs from acoustic scattering in weakly degenerate films.

Enhanced figure of merit due to altered scattering processes.

Abstract

Hot wall technique was used to grow block single crystal films of Bi_2Te_3 and solid solutions of Bi_(0.5)Sb_(1.5)Te_3 on mica (muscovite) substrates. X-ray diffraction studies demonstrated that the crystalline c-axis in the films was normal to the substrate plane. Seebeck coefficient, electrical conductivity and magnetoresistivity tensor components were measured at various orientations of magnetic and electric fields in the temperature interval 77-300 K and magnetic field up to 14 T. Scattering mechanism of charge carriers in the films were studied using temperature dependences of the degeneracy parameter and the Seebeck coefficient in terms of a many-valley model of energy spectrum. Obtained results have shown that the effective scattering parameter is considerably differed from the value specific for an acoustic scattering of charge carriers in the weakly degenerate films due to an additional scattering of charge carriers on interface and interctystallite boundaries. These features of charge carrier scattering are supposed to affect electronic transport in the films and enhance figure of merit.