Journal
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Volume 11, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
NATURE RESEARCH
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16913-2
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Funding
- National Science Foundation of China [11774223, U1732154, 51761135127]
- Shanghai talent program
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) [392228380]
- Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
- Natural Science Foundation of China [51761135127, 11674211]
- 111 project [D16002]
- National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars [51725102]
- J-PARC/MLF [2017A0071, 2018B0281]
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Chemical doping is one of the most important strategies for tuning electrical properties of semiconductors, particularly thermoelectric materials. Generally, the main role of chemical doping lies in optimizing the carrier concentration, but there can potentially be other important effects. Here, we show that chemical doping plays multiple roles for both electron and phonon transport properties in half-Heusler thermoelectric materials. With ZrNiSn-based half-Heusler materials as an example, we use high-quality single and polycrystalline crystals, various probes, including electrical transport measurements, inelastic neutron scattering measurement, and first-principles calculations, to investigate the underlying electron-phonon interaction. We find that chemical doping brings strong screening effects to ionized impurities, grain boundary, and polar optical phonon scattering, but has negligible influence on lattice thermal conductivity. Furthermore, it is possible to establish a carrier scattering phase diagram, which can be used to select reasonable strategies for optimization of the thermoelectric performance. Chemical doping plays an important role in tuning carrier concentration of materials, but its influence on other aspects of electrical properties is less known. Here, the authors find that chemical doping brings strong screening effects to ionized impurities, grain boundary, and polar optical phonon scattering.
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