Ultra-High Thermoelectric Power Factors in Narrow Gap Materials with Asymmetric Bands

Abstract

We theoretically unveil the unconventional possibility to achieve extremely high thermoelectric power factors in lightly doped narrow gap semiconductors with asymmetric conduction/valence bands operated in the bipolar transport regime. Specifically, using Boltzmann transport simulations, we show that narrow bandgap materials, rather than suffering from performance degradation due to bipolar conduction, if they possess highly asymmetric conduction and valence bands in terms of either effective masses, density of states, or phonon scattering rates, then they can deliver very high power factors. We show that this is reached because, under these conditions, electronic transport becomes phonon scattering limited, rather than ionized impurity scattering limited, which allows large conductivities. We explain why this effect has not been observed so far in the known narrow-gap semiconductors, interpret some recent related experimental findings, and propose a few examples from the half-Heusler materials family for which this effect can be observed and power factors even up to 50 mW/m$K^2$ can be reached.