Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Traditional thermoelectric materials rely on low thermal conductivity to enhance their efficiency but suffer from inherently limited power factors. Innovative pathways to optimize electronic transport are thus crucial. Here, we achieve ultrahigh power factors in Ni 3 Ge-based systems through an unconventional thermoelectric materials design principle. When overlapping flat and dispersive bands are engineered to the Fermi level, charge carriers can undergo intense interband scattering, yielding an energy filtering effect similar to what has long been predicted in certain nanostructured materials. Via a multistep DFT-based screening method developed here, we find a family of L1 2 -ordered binary compounds with ultrahigh power factors up to 11 mW m −1 K −2 near room temperature, which are driven by an intrinsic phonon-mediated energy filtering mechanism. Our comprehensive experimental and theoretical study of these intriguing materials paves the way for understanding and designing high-performance scattering-tuned metallic thermoelectrics.
Source: Science Advances
Authors: Fabian Garmroudi, Simone Di Cataldo, Michael Parzer, Jennifer Coulter, Yutaka Iwasaki, Matthias Grasser, Simon Stockinger, Stephan Pázmán, Sandra Witzmann, Alexander Riss, Herwig Michor, Raimund Podloucky, Sergii Khmelevskyi, Antoine Georges, Karsten Held, Takao Mori, Ernst Bauer, Andrej Pustogow
Institutions: Los Alamos National Laboratory, TU Wien, Sapienza University of Rome, National Institute for Materials Science, Flatiron Institute, Research Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics, University of Vienna, University of Geneva, École Polytechnique, Collège de France, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, Centre de Physique Théorique, University of Tsukuba
Language: English
Subfield: Materials Chemistry
Field: Materials Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $4,500
OpenAlex ID: W4412830484