Journal
THIN SOLID FILMS
Volume 666, Issue -, Pages 185-190Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA
DOI: 10.1016/j.tsf.2018.09.045
Keywords
Thermoelectric materials; Zinc oxide; Sol-gel method; Pulsed laser deposition; Thermal conductivity; Thin films; Grain boundary; Interface
Categories
Funding
- JST CREST Program
- Nanotechnology Platform Project (Nanotechnology Open Facilities in Osaka University) of Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan [S-17-OS-0025]
- JSPS [17J00328]
- [16H02078]
- [15K13276]
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ZnO, a wide bandgap (3.3 eV) semiconductor has been expected to be a transparent thermoelectric material for the purpose of energy harvesting application because it is a low-cost and ubiquitous element material with a high optical transmittance and a high power factor. Bulk Ga-doped ZnO (GZO) is expected to have higher electrical conductivity and lower thermal conductivity than bulk Al-doped ZnO. However, because reports on their thermoelectric properties of GZO films have been scarce up to now, it has been unclear what film characters affect the thermoelectric properties effectively. In this work, GZO thin films with different characters (c-axis orientation, crystal domains and the domain interfaces, and carrier activation rate) were fabricated by two different methods, sol-gel method and pulsed laser deposition. All samples have optical transmittance over 80% in visible range. The highly-oriented GZO films exhibit the highest power factors up to 2.8 mu Wcm(-1)K(-2) in the reported GZO materials and low thermal conductivities of 8.4 Wm(-1) K-1 (1/4 as high as that of bulk GZO). This enhanced thermoelectric performance is attributed to the high carrier activation rate, and the interfaces of highly-oriented crystal domains with the small carrier scattering effect.
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