title: Enhancement of thermoelectric properties by modulation-doping in silicon germanium alloy nanocomposites.
abstract: Modulation-doping was theoretically proposed and experimentally proved to be effective in increasing the power factor of nanocomposites (Si(80)Ge(20))(70)(Si(100)B(5))(30) by increasing the carrier mobility but not the figure-of-merit (ZT) due to the increased thermal conductivity. Here we report an alternative materials design, using alloy Si(70)Ge(30) instead of Si as the nanoparticles and Si(95)Ge(5) as the matrix, to increase the power factor but not the thermal conductivity, leading to a ZT of 1.3 ± 0.1 at 900 °C.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467, USA.
authors.forename: Bo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Mona
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zebarjadi
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Lukas
authors.forename: Hengzhi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Dezhi
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Cyril
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Opeil
authors.forename: Mildred
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dresselhaus
authors.forename: Gang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Zhifeng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Ren