Compensation of Zn substitution and secondary phase controls effective mass and weighted mobility in In and Ga co-doped ZnO material

Abstract

Conductivity σ and thermal conductivity κ are directly related to carrier concentration while Seebeck coefficient S is inversely proportional to carrier concentration. Therefore, improving thermoelectric (TE) performance is challenging. Here, the first-time analysis of secondary phase-controlled TE performance in terms of density-of-state effective mass md∗, weighted mobility μw and quality factor B is discussed in ZnO system. The results show that the secondary spinel phase Ga2O3(ZnO)9 not only impacts on κ but also on σ and S at high temperature, while the effect of carrier concentration seem to be dominant at low temperature. For the high-spinel-segregation sample, a compensation of dopant atoms from the spinel to substitutional sites in the ZnO matrix at high temperature leads to a low decreased rate of temperature-dependent md∗. The compensation process also induces a band sharpening, a small μw reduction, and a large B enhancement. As a result, In and Ga co-doped ZnO bulk with the highest spinel segregation achieves the greatest PF improvement by 112.8%, owing to enhanced Seebeck coefficient by 110% as compared to the good Zn-substitution sample.