Thermoelectric Properties of Te-doped In0.9Si0.1Se with Enhanced Effective Mass

Abstract

Metal chalcogenides have attracted attention as potential thermoelectric materials due to their intrinsically low thermal conductivity arising from their layered structure with weak van der Waals atomic bonding. InSe, one of the post transition metal chalcogenides, also has low thermal conductivity and doping of InSe with elements such as Sn, Si, and As is known to improve the electronic transport properties. Herein, we investigated Te doping in Si-doped InSe (In0.9Si0.1Se) and report enhanced thermoelectric properties, mainly the increased Seebeck coefficient due to the increase in effective mass. Due to the increase in effective mass, the magnitude of the Seebeck coefficient systematically increased with Te doping from 234 mu V/K to 405 mu V/K. Eventually, the zT at 700 K was enhanced from 0.040 for the pristine sample to 0.069-0.096 for the Te-doped samples.