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Experimental determination of phonon thermal conductivity and Lorenz ratio of single-crystal bismuth telluride

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Abstract

We use a magnetothermal resistance method to measure the lattice thermal conductivity of single-crystal Bi2Te3 from 5 to 60 K. Lattice thermal conductivity is calculated by extrapolating the thermal conductivity versus electrical conductivity curve to a zero electrical conductivity value. Our results show that the measured phonon thermal conductivity follows the e΄min/T temperature dependence and the Lorenz ratio corresponds to the modified Sommerfeld value in the intermediate temperature range. Our low-temperature experimental data and analysis on Bi2Te3 are a complement to previous measurements of Goldsmid (Ref. 17) and theoretical calculations by Hellman et al. (Ref. 18) at higher temperature 100-300 K.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Solid State Solar–Thermal Energy Conversion Center (S3TEC), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Science under award number DE-SC0001299. C.P.O. would like to thank Robert D. Farrell, S.J. and Christopher Noyes for helpful comments on the manuscript, and acknowledges financial support from the Trustees of Boston College. M.Y. is grateful to Ying Ran and Krzysztof Kempa for helpful discussions and comments on the manuscript. The work at the University of Virginia is supported by the Air Force Young Investigator Award, grant number FA9550-14-1-0316. Stephen Wilson acknowledges support from NSF CAREER Grant No. DMR-1056625.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, 02467, USA

    Mengliang Yao & Cyril Opeil

  2. Materials Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, 93106, USA

    Stephen Wilson

  3. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, 22904, USA

    Mona Zebarjadi

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  1. Mengliang Yao
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  2. Cyril Opeil
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  3. Stephen Wilson
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  4. Mona Zebarjadi
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Correspondence to Cyril Opeil.

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Yao, M., Opeil, C., Wilson, S. et al. Experimental determination of phonon thermal conductivity and Lorenz ratio of single-crystal bismuth telluride. MRS Communications 7, 922–927 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2017.118

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