Electronic and thermoelectric properties of van der Waals materials with ring-shaped valence bands
- Department of Physics and the Center of Theoretical and Computational Physics, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong (China)
The valence band of a variety of few-layer, two-dimensional materials consist of a ring of states in the Brillouin zone. The energy-momentum relation has the form of a “Mexican hat” or a Rashba dispersion. The two-dimensional density of states is singular at or near the band edge, and the band-edge density of modes turns on nearly abruptly as a step function. The large band-edge density of modes enhances the Seebeck coefficient, the power factor, and the thermoelectric figure of merit ZT. Electronic and thermoelectric properties are determined from ab initio calculations for few-layer III–VI materials GaS, GaSe, InS, InSe, for Bi{sub 2}Se{sub 3}, for monolayer Bi, and for bilayer graphene as a function of vertical field. The effect of interlayer coupling on these properties in few-layer III–VI materials and Bi{sub 2}Se{sub 3} is described. Analytical models provide insight into the layer dependent trends that are relatively consistent for all of these few-layer materials. Vertically biased bilayer graphene could serve as an experimental test-bed for measuring these effects.
- OSTI ID:
- 22494769
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 118, Issue 7; Other Information: (c) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0021-8979
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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