Electronic structure of bismuth telluride nanowires with the growth directions [110] and [015] is studied in the framework of anisotropic effective mass method using the parabolic band approximation. The components of the electron and hole effective mass tensor for six valleys are calculated for both growth directions. For a square nanowire, in the temperature range from 77 K to 500 K, the dependence of the Seebeck coefficient, the electron thermal and electrical conductivity as well as the figure of merit ZT on the nanowire thickness and on the excess hole concentration are investigated in the constant-relaxation-time approximation. The carrier confinement is shown to play essential role for square nanowires with thickness less than 30 nm. The confinement decreases both the carrier concentration and the thermal conductivity but increases the maximum value of Seebeck coefficient in contrast to the excess holes (impurities). The confinement effect is stronger for the direction [015] than for the direction [110] due to the carrier mass difference for these directions. The carrier confinement increases maximum value of ZT and shifts it towards high temperatures. For the p-type bismuth telluride nanowires with growth direction [110], the maximum value of the figure of merit is equal to 1.3, 1.6, and 2.8, correspondingly, at temperatures 310 K, 390 K, 480 K and the nanowire thicknesses 30 nm, 15 nm, and 7 nm. At the room temperature, the figure of merit equals 1.2, 1.3, and 1.7, respectively.
Bismuth telluride (Bi2Te3) and its alloys are the best bulk thermoelectric materials known today. The stacked quasi-two-dimensional (2D) layers of Bi2Te3 were also identified as topological insulators. In this paper we describe a method for graphene-inspired exfoliation of crystalline bismuth telluride films with a thickness of a few atoms. The atomically thin films were suspended across trenches in Si/SiO2 substrates, and subjected to detail characterization. The presence of the van der Waals gaps allowed us to disassemble Bi2Te3 crystal into its quintuple building blocks - five mono-atomic s…
We report on graphene-like exfoliation of the large-area crystalline films and ribbons of bismuth telluride with the thicknesses of a few atoms. It is demonstrated that bismuth telluride, the most important material for thermoelectric industry, can be mechanically separated into its building blocks -[Te-Bi-Te-Bi-Te]- atomic five-folds with the thickness of ~1 nm and even further - to subunits with smaller thicknesses. The atomically-thin crystals can be structured into suspended crystalline ribbons providing quantum confinement in two dimensions. The quasi two-dimensional (2-D) crystals of bis…
We theoretically studied the effect of the perpendicular electric field on the thermoelectric properties of the intrinsic, n-type and p-type bismuth telluride nanowires with the growth direction [110]. The electronic structure and the wave functions were calculated by solving self-consistently the system of the Schrodinger and Poisson equations using the spectral method. The Poisson equation was solved in terms of the Newton - Raphson method within the predictor-corrector approach. The electron - electron exchange - correlation interactions were taken into account in our analysis. In the tempe…
Bismuth telluride is a low energy bulk band-gap topological system with conducting surface states. Besides its very good thermoelectric properties, it also makes a very good candidate for broadband photodetectors. Here, we report temperature-dependent photo-Seebeck effect in a bulk single crystalline bismuth telluride. On light illumination, an electrically biased sample shows distinguishable contributions in the measured current due to both the Seebeck effect and the normal photo-generated carriers within a narrow layer of the sample. Detailed experiments are performed to elucidate the distin…
Hetero-epitaxial films based on bismuth telluride with excess of Te were grown by hat wall technique at the surface of the mica (muscovite). Galvanomagnetic properties of the thin films were measured, and quantum oscillations of the magnetoresistance were found at the temperatures below 10 K in the magnetic field from 6 to 14 T. From analysis of magnetoresistance oscillations the main surface state parameters of the films were determined. Expementally obtained Landau level index shift and its temperature dependence are consistent with Berry phase specific for topological Dirac surface states. …
We study the electrical transport properties of ensembles of bismuth telluride (Bi2Te3) nanoplates grown by solution based chemical synthesis. Devices consisting of Bi2Te3 nanoplates are fabricated by surface treatment after dropping the solution on the structured gold plates and the temperature dependence of resistance shows a nonmetallic behavior. Symmetric tunneling behavior in I-V was observed in both our experimental results and theoretical calculation of surface conductance based on a simple Hamiltonian, which excludes carrier-carrier interactions. Here, we present two devices: one showi…
We report measurements of electronic, thermoelectric, and galvanomagnetic properties of individual single crystal antimony telluride (Sb2Te3) nanowires with diameters in the range of 20-100 nm. Temperature dependent resistivity and thermoelectric power (TEP) measurements indicate hole dominant diffusive thermoelectric generation, with an enhancement of the TEP for smaller diameter wires up to 110 uV/K at T = 300 K. We measure the magnetoresistance, in magnetic fields both parallel and perpendicular to the nanowire [110] axis, where strong anisotropic positive magnetoresistance behavior was obs…
Potential applications in spintronics and quantum computing have motivated much recent research in epitaxial films of bismuth telluride. This system is also an example of van der Waals (vdW) epitaxy where the interface coherence between film and substrate is based on vdW bonds instead of strong ionic or covalent bonds. Effects of lattice mismatch on electrical properties and film structure are more difficult to control due to the weakness of the vdW forces. Here we present a general x-ray diffraction method to investigate in-plane atomic displacements and lateral lattice coherence length in vd…
Metallic Bi2Te3 crystalline sheets with the room-temperature resistivity of above 10 mΩ cm were prepared and their magnetoresistive transport was measured in a field of up to 9 Tesla. The Shubnikov de Haas oscillations were identified from the secondly-derived magnetoresistance curves. While changing the angle between the field and normal axis of the sheets, we find that the oscillation periods present a cosine dependence on the angle. This indicates a two-dimensional transport due to the surface state. The work reveals a resolvable surface contribution to the overall conduction even in a meta…
We report on "graphene-like" mechanical exfoliation of single-crystal Bi2Te3 films and thermoelectric characterization of the stacks of such films. Thermal conductivity of the resulting "pseudo-superlattices" was measured by the "hot disk" and "laser flash" techniques. The room-temperature in-plane (cross-plane) thermal conductivity of the stacks decreases by a factor of ~2.4 (3.5) as compared to bulk. The thermal conductivity reduction with preserved electrical properties leads to strong increase in the thermoelectric figure of merit. It is suggested that the film thinning to few-quintuples a…
Last few years have witnessed significant enhancement of thermoelectric figure of merit of lead telluride (PbTe) via nanostructuring. Despite the experimental progress, current understanding of the electron transport in PbTe is based on either band structure calculation using first principles with constant relaxation time approximation or empirical models, both relying on adjustable parameters obtained by fitting experimental data. Here, we report parameter-free first-principles calculation of electron and phonon transport properties of PbTe, including mode-by-mode electron-phonon scattering a…
Since 2017, epitaxial graphene has been the base material for the US national standard for resistance. A future avenue of research within electrical metrology is to remove the need for strong magnetic fields, as is currently the case for devices exhibiting the quantum Hall effect. The quantum Hall effect is just one of many research endeavours that revolve around recent quantum physical phenomena like composite fermions, charge density waves, and topological properties [1-2]. New materials, like magnetically doped topological insulators (MTIs), offer access to the quantum anomalous Hall effect…
The thermoelectric properties of distorted bismuth (110) layer are investigated using first-principles calculations combined with the Boltzmann transport equation for both electrons and phonons. To accurately predict the electronic and transport properties, the quasiparticle corrections with the GW approximation of many-body effects have been explicitly included. It is found that a maximum ZT value of 6.4 can be achieved for n-type system, which is essentially stemmed from the weak scattering of electrons. Moreover, we demonstrate that the distorted Bi layer remains high ZT values at relativel…
Many thermoelectrics like Bi exhibit Rashba spin-orbit surface bands for which topological insulator behavior consisting of ultrahigh mobilities and enhanced thermopower has been predicted. Bi nanowires realize surface-only electronic transport since they become bulk insulators when they undergo the bulk semimetal-semiconductor transition as a result of quantum confinement for diameters close to 50 nm. We studied 20-, 30-, 50- and 200-nm trigonal Bi wires. Shubnikov-de Haas magnetoresistance oscillations caused by surface electrons and bulklike holes enable the determination of their densities…
We calculate the phonon-drag contribution to the transverse (Nernst) thermoelectric power $S_{yx}$ in a bismuth single crystal subjected to a quantizing magnetic field. The calculated heights of the Nernst peaks originating from the hole Landau levels and their temperature dependence reproduce the right order of magnitude for those of the pronounced magneto-oscillations recently reported by Behnia et al [Phys.Rev.Lett. 98, 166602 (2007)]. A striking experimental finding that $S_{yx}$ is much larger than the longitudinal (Seebeck) thermoelectric power $S_{xx}$ can be naturally explained as the …
Germanium telluride (GeTe), a phase-change material, is known to exhibit four different structural phases: three at room temperature (one amorphous and two crystalline, $α$ and $γ$) and one at high temperature (crystalline $β$). Because transitions between the amorphous and crystalline phases lead to significant changes in material properties (e.g., refractive index and resistivity), GeTe has been investigated as a phase-change material for photonics, thermoelectrics, ferroelectrics, and spintronics. Consequently, the temperature-dependent phase transitions in GeTe have been studied for bulk a…
A 125Te NMR study of bismuth telluride nanoparticles as function of particle size revealed that the spin-lattice relaxation is enhanced below 33 nm, accompanied by a transition of NMR spectra from single to bimodal regime. The satellite peak features a negative Knight shift and higher relaxivity, consistent with core polarization from p-band carriers. Whereas nanocrystals follow a Korringa law in the range 140-420K, micrometer particles do so only below 200K. The results reveal increased metallicity of these nanoscale topological insulators in the limit of higher surface-to-volume ratios.
Bismuth chalcogenides and lead telluride/selenide alloys exhibit exceptional thermoelectric properties which could be harnessed for power generation and device applications. Since phonons play a significant role in achieving these desired properties, quantifying the interaction between phonons and electrons, which is encoded in the Eliashberg function of a material, is of immense importance. However, its precise extraction has in part been limited due to the lack of local experimental probes. Here we construct a method to directly extract the Eliashberg function using Landau level spectroscopy…
