Thermal conductivity of the thermoelectric layered cobalt oxides measured by the Harman method

In-plane thermal conductivity of the thermoelectric layered cobalt oxides has been measured using the Harman method, in which thermal conductivity is obtained from temperature gradient induced by applied current. We have found that the charge reservoir block (the block other than the CoO2 block) dominates the thermal conduction, where a nano-block integration concept is effective for material design. We have further found that the thermal conductivity shows a small but finite in-plane anisotropy between a and b axes, which can be ascribed to the misfit structure. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.