Enhancement of thermoelectric efficiency in (Ca, Dy)MnO3-(Ca, Yb)MnO3 solid solutions

Transport and thermoelectric (TE) properties have been investigated for the (Ca, Dy) MnO3-(Ca, Yb)MnO3 solid solutions. Resistivity is found to be closely correlated with the structural distortions in this system. The enhanced TE efficiency in the solid solutions can be well attributed to the distortion of electronic density of states along with a strong point defect scattering. Such band structure engineering and phonon engineering have resulted in an effective improvement of the TE performance in these solid solutions and could be applied to more systems. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3477959]