Engineering Temperature‐Dependent Carrier Concentration in Bulk Composite Materials via Temperature‐Dependent Fermi Level Offset
Abstract
Precise control of carrier concentration in both bulk and thin‐film materials is crucial for many solid‐state devices, including photovoltaic cells, superconductors, and high mobility transistors. For applications that span a wide temperature range (thermoelectric power generation being a prime example) the optimal carrier concentration varies as a function of temperature. This work presents a modified modulation doping method to engineer the temperature dependence of the carrier concentration by incorporating a nanosize secondary phase that controls the temperature‐dependent doping in the bulk matrix. This study demonstrates this technique by de‐doping the heavily defect‐doped degenerate semiconductor GeTe, thereby enhancing its average power factor by 100% at low temperatures, with no deterioration at high temperatures. This can be a general method to improve the average thermoelectric performance of many other materials.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Sep 14, 2017
- Source ID
- 10.1002/aenm.201701623
Entities
People
- Alexander A. Page
- Anurag Panda
- Ctirad Uher
- Donald T. Morelli
- Kevin P. Pipe
- Si Hui
- Stephen R. Forrest
- Trevor P. Bailey
- Wenpei Gao
- Xiaoqing Pan
- Xu Lu
Organizations
- Michigan State University
- National Science Foundation
- United States Army
- United States Department of Energy
- University of Michigan