scholarly journals Promising Thermoelectric Performance in Two-Dimensional Semiconducting Boron Monolayer

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yonglan Hu ◽  
Ding Li ◽  
Rongkun Liu ◽  
Shichang Li ◽  
Chunbao Feng ◽  
...  

A heavy element is a special character for high thermoelectric performance since it generally guarantees a low lattice thermal conductivity. Here, we unexpectedly found a promising thermoelectric performance in a two-dimensional semiconducting monolayer consisting of a light boron element. Using first-principles combined with the Boltzmann transport theory, we have shown that in contrast to graphene or black phosphorus, the boron monolayer has a low lattice thermal conductivity arising from its complex crystal of hexagonal vacancies. The conduction band with an intrinsic camelback shape leads to the high DOS and a high n-type Seebeck coefficient, while the highly degenerate valence band along with the small hole effective mass contributes to the high p-type power factor. As a result, we obtained the p-type thermoelectric figure of merit up to 0.96 at 300 K, indicating that the boron monolayer is a promising p-type thermoelectric material.

Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (19) ◽  
pp. 5604
Author(s):  
Yanyan Chen ◽  
Jie Sun ◽  
Wei Kang ◽  
Qian Wang

The pentagon has been proven to be an important structural unit for carbon materials, leading to different physical and chemical properties from those of hexagon-based allotropes. Following the development from graphene to penta-graphene, a breakthrough has very recently been made for graphyne—for example, imidazole-graphyne (ID-GY) was formed by assembling experimentally synthesized pentagonal imidazole molecules and acetylenic linkers. In this work, we study the thermal properties and thermoelectric performance of ID-GY by combining first principle calculations with the Boltzmann transport theory. The calculated lattice thermal conductivity of ID-GY is 10.76 W/mK at 300 K, which is only one tenth of that of γ-graphyne (106.24 W/mK). A detailed analysis of the harmonic and anharmonic properties, including the phonon group velocity, phonon lifetime, atomic displacement parameter, and bond energy curves, reveals that the low lattice thermal conductivity can be attributed to the low Young’s modulus, low Debye temperature, and high Grüneisen parameter. Furthermore, at room temperature, ID-GY can reach a high ZT value of 0.46 with a 5.8 × 1012 cm−2 hole concentration, which is much higher than the value for many other carbon-based materials. This work demonstrates that changing structural units from hexagonal to pentagonal can significantly reduce the lattice thermal conductivity and enhance the thermoelectric performance of carbon-based materials.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nan Lu ◽  
Jie Guan

Abstract We study the thermal and electronic transport properties as well as the TE performance of three two-dimensional XI2 (X = Ge, Sn, Pb) bilayers using density functional theory and Boltzmann transport theory. We compared the lattice thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity, Seebeck coefficient, and dimensionless figure of merit (ZT) for the XI2 monolayers and bilayers. Our results show that the lattice thermal conductivity at room temperature for the bilayers is as low as ~1.1-1.7 Wm-1K-1, which is about 1.6 times as large as the monolayers for all the three materials. Electronic structure calculations show that all the XI2 bilayers are indirect-gap semiconductors with the band gap values between 1.84 eV and 1.96 eV at PBE level, which is similar as the corresponding monolayers. The calculated results of ZT show that the bilayer structures display much less direction dependent TE efficiency and have much larger n-type ZT values compared with the monolayers. The dramatic difference between the monolayer and bilayer indicates that the inter-layer interaction plays an important role in the TE performance of XI2, which provides the tunability on their TE characteristics.


RSC Advances ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (69) ◽  
pp. 40670-40680 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Y. Wu ◽  
L. Sun ◽  
J. C. Han ◽  
H. R. Gong

First-principles calculations and Boltzmann transport theory have been combined to comparatively investigate the band structure, phonon spectrum, lattice thermal conductivity, and the transport properties of the β-bismuth monolayer and bulk Bi.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liangshuang Fan ◽  
Hengyu Yang ◽  
Guofeng Xie

Recently, monolayer of triphosphides (e.g., InP3, SnP3, and GaP3) attracts much attention due to their good thermoelectric performance. Herein, we predict a novel triphosphide monolayer AsP3 and comprehensively investigate its thermoelectric properties by combining first-principles calculations and semiclassical Boltzmann transport theory. The results show that AsP3 monolayer has an ultralow thermal conductivity of 0.36 and 0.55 Wm K−1 at room temperature along the armchair and zigzag direction. Surprisingly, its maximum Seebeck coefficient in the p-type doping reaches 2,860 µVK−1. Because of the ultralow thermal conductivity and ultrahigh Seebeck coefficient, the thermoelectric performance of AsP3 monolayer is excellent, and the maximum ZT of p-type can reach 3.36 at 500 K along the armchair direction, which is much higher than that of corresponding bulk AsP3 at the same temperature. Our work indicates that the AsP3 monolayer is the promising candidate in TE applications and will also stimulate experimental scientists’ interest in the preparation, characterization, and thermoelectric performance tuning.


Author(s):  
Zhiyuan Xu ◽  
Cong Wang ◽  
Xuming Wu ◽  
Lei Hu ◽  
Yuqi Liu ◽  
...  

Ultralow lattice thermal conductivity is crucial to achieve a high thermoelectric figure of merit for thermoelectric applications. In this work, using the first-principles and phonon Boltzmann transport theory, we investigate...


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenwen Zheng ◽  
Wei Cao ◽  
Ziyu Wang ◽  
Huixiong Deng ◽  
Jing Shi ◽  
...  

We have investigated the thermoelectric properties of MoO3 monolayer and its defective structures with oxygen vacancies by using first-principles method combined with Boltzmann transport theory. Our results show that the thermoelectric properties of MoO3 monolayer exhibit an anisotropic behavior which is caused by the similar anisotropic phenomenon of electronic conductivity and thermal conductivity. Moreover, the creation of oxygen vacancies proves to be an effective way to enhance the ZT values of MoO3 monolayer which is caused by the sharp peak near the Fermi level in density of states. The increased ZT value can reach 0.84 along x-axis at 300K.


2021 ◽  
Vol 871 ◽  
pp. 203-207
Author(s):  
Jian Liu

In this work, we use first principles DFT calculations, anharmonic phonon scatter theory and Boltzmann transport method, to predict a comprehensive study on the thermoelectric properties as electronic and phonon transport of layered LaSe2 crystal. The flat-and-dispersive type band structure of LaSe2 crystal offers a high power factor. In the other hand, low lattice thermal conductivity is revealed in LaSe2 semiconductor, combined with its high power factor, the LaSe2 crystal is considered a promising thermoelectric material. It is demonstrated that p-type LaSe2 could be optimized to exhibit outstanding thermoelectric performance with a maximum ZT value of 1.41 at 1100K. Explored by density functional theory calculations, the high ZT value is due to its high Seebeck coefficient S, high electrical conductivity, and low lattice thermal conductivity .


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 2031-2038
Author(s):  
Wenwen Zheng ◽  
Wei Cao ◽  
Ziyu Wang ◽  
Huixiong Deng ◽  
Jing Shi ◽  
...  

We have investigated the thermoelectric properties of a pristine MoO3 monolayer and its defective structures with different oxygen vacancies using first-principles methods combined with Boltzmann transport theory. Our results show that the thermoelectric properties of the MoO3 monolayer exhibit an evident anisotropic behavior which is caused by the similar anisotropy of the electrical and thermal conductivity. The thermoelectric materials figure of merit (ZT) value along the x- and the y-axis is 0.72 and 0.08 at 300 K, respectively. Moreover, the creation of oxygen vacancies leads to a sharp peak near the Fermi level in the density of states. This proves to be an effective way to enhance the ZT values of the MoO3 monolayer. The increased ZT values can reach 0.84 (x-axis) and 0.12 (y-axis) at 300 K.


Crystals ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuanchun Pan ◽  
Zhen Li ◽  
Zhonglu Guo

As the most promising materials for phase-change data storage, the pseudobinary mGeTe•nSb2Te3 (GST) chalcogenides have been widely investigated. Nevertheless, an in-depth understanding of the thermal-transport property of GST is still lacking, which is important to achieve overall good performance of the memory devices. Herein, by using first-principles calculations and Boltzmann transport theory, we have systematically studied the lattice thermal conductivity along the out of plane direction of both stable hexagonal and meta-stable rock-salt-like phases of GST, and good agreement with available experiments has been observed. It is revealed that with the increase of the n/m ratio, the lattice thermal conductivity of hexagonal GST increases due to the large contribution from the weak Te-Te bonding, while an inverse trend is observed in meta-stable GST, which is due to the increased number of vacancies that results in the decrease of the lattice thermal conductivity. The size effect on thermal conductivity is also discussed. Our results provide useful information to manipulate the thermal property of GST phase-change materials.


2003 ◽  
Vol 793 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronggui Yang ◽  
Gang Chen

ABSTRACTA phonon Boltzmann transport model is established to study the lattice thermal conductivity of nanocomposites with nanowires embedded in a host semiconductor material. Special attention has been paid to cell-cell interaction using periodic boundary conditions. The simulation shows that the temperature profiles in nanocomposites are very different from those in conventional composites, due to ballistic phonon transport at nanoscale. The thermal conductivity of periodic 2-D nanocomposites is a strong function of the size of the embedded wires and the volumetric fraction of the constituent materials. At constant volumetric fraction the smaller the wire diameter, the smaller is the thermal conductivity of periodic two-dimensional nanocomposites. For fixed silicon wire dimension, the lower the atomic percentage of germanium, the lower the thermal conductivity of the nanocomposites. The results of this study can be used to direct the development of high efficiency thermoelectric materials.


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