Thermoelectric performance of SnTe with ZnO carrier compensation, energy filtering, and multiscale phonon scattering

In this work, the thermoelectric properties of SnTe have been regulated synergistically by introduction of n-type ZnO nanoinclusions. On one hand, the excessive holes in SnTe matrix were compensated properly by n-type ZnO, and the Seebeck coefficient has been improved greatly due to the carrier energy filtering effect by a large quantity of ZnO-SnTe hetero-junction interface barriers; On the other hand, the thermal conductivity gets reduced by the enhanced phonon scattering from multiscale hierarchical architectures. Consequently, a maximum ZT of similar to 0.9 at 873K has been obtained in the 0.8 wt% sample, which enhances by 112% in comparison with the nanoinclusion-free sample.