Evidence for energy-dependent scattering dominating thermoelectricity in heavy fermion systems

TL;DR

This study provides experimental evidence that energy-dependent electron scattering, particularly due to Kondo effects, significantly influences thermoelectric properties in heavy fermion systems, challenging the constant relaxation time approximation.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates, through ARPES measurements, that relaxation times are energy-dependent in heavy fermion systems, linking this to thermoelectric behavior beyond traditional models.

Findings

Energy-dependent relaxation times observed near the Fermi level.

Kondo scattering explains the sign of the Seebeck coefficient.

Energy dependence cannot be explained by CRTA.

Abstract

In the field of thermoelectric materials and devices, improving energy conversion efficiency remains a long-standing challenge. As a promising approach to address this issue, utilizing energy-dependent electron-scattering beyond the ordinary constant relaxation time approximation (CRTA) has been proposed. However, direct experimental evidence for an energy-dependent scattering reflected in the Seebeck coefficient is still lacking. Here we demonstrate using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy that the relaxation time of heavy fermion quasiparticles is highly dependent on the energy near the Fermi level. The observed energy dependence of the relaxation time is due to the coherent Kondo scattering, describing the sign of the Seebeck coefficient reasonably well, which cannot be deduced from CRTA. Our findings provide not only deeper insight into the understanding of thermoelectricity in correlated materials, but also future perspectives on possible orbital-selective engineering of thermoelectric materials.