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Effect of the polar distortion on the thermoelectric properties of GeTe

  • Regular Article - Solid State and Materials
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Abstract

First principle calculations are performed to investigate the effect of polar order strength on the thermoelectric properties of GeTe compound in its rhombohedral structure. Different magnitudes of polarization exhibit a noticeable effect on the thermoelectric properties of GeTe. In particular, polar structures with higher polarization tend to show higher thermoelectric efficiencies. Thus, it is shown that polarization engineering is an important factor in designing efficient thermoelectric devices. In particular, we proposed that high thermoelectric performances could be achieved by growing epitaxial GeTe films that are bi-axially compressed in the directions perpendicular to the polar axis in order to achieve larger polarization states.

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Data Availability Statement

This manuscript has no associated data or the data will not be deposited. [Authors’ comment: There are no external data associated with the manuscript.].

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Acknowledgements

C.P. and L.B. also thank the DARPA grant HR0011-15-2-0038 (MATRIX program). We would like to thank K. Patel for her valuable help in the computation procedure of the data. This research is supported by the Arkansas High Performance Computing Center which is funded through multiple National Science Foundation grants and the Arkansas Economic Development Commission.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Microelectronic-Photonics Program, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, 72701, USA

    Aida Sheibani Gunder, Raad Haleoot, Laurent Bellaiche & Bothina Hamad

  2. Laboratoire SPMS, CentraleSupélec/CNRS UMR8580, Université Paris-Saclay, 8 rue Joliot-Curie, 91190, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Charles Paillard

  3. Physics Department, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, 72701, USA

    Charles Paillard, Abhyian Pandit, Laurent Bellaiche & Bothina Hamad

  4. Department of Physics at the College of Education, University of Mustansiriyah, Baghdad, 10052, Iraq

    Raad Haleoot

  5. Physics Department, The University of Jordan, Amman, 11942, Jordan

    Bothina Hamad

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  1. Aida Sheibani Gunder
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Contributions

ASG performed the calculations and wrote the paper. CP contributed in the calculations and discussion of the polar polarization and guided ASG in most of her calculations, AP and RH helped in thermoelectric and phonon calculations, LB helped in the discussion and reviewing the paper and BH is the academic advisor who suggested the project, helped in the discussion and reviewed the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Aida Sheibani Gunder.

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Gunder, A.S., Paillard, C., Pandit, A. et al. Effect of the polar distortion on the thermoelectric properties of GeTe. Eur. Phys. J. B 94, 11 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/s10051-020-00019-1

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