Symmetry-Guaranteed High Carrier Mobility in Quasi-2D Thermoelectric Semiconductors.

Abstract

Quasi-2D semiconductors have garnered immense research interest for next-generation electronics and thermoelectrics due to their unique structural, mechanical, and transport properties. However, most quasi-2D semiconductors experimentally synthesized so far have relatively low carrier mobility, preventing the achievement of exceptional power output. To break through this obstacle, a route is proposed based on the crystal symmetry arguments to facilitate the charge transport of quasi-2D semiconductors, in which the horizontal mirror symmetry is found to vanish the electron-phonon coupling strength mediated by phonons with purely out-of-plane vibrational vectors. This is demonstrated in ZrBeSi-type quasi-2D systems, where the representative sample Ba_1.01 AgSb shows a high room-temperature hole mobility of 344 cm² V^-1 S^-1 , a record value among quasi-2D polycrystalline thermoelectrics. Accompanied by intrinsically low thermal conductivity, an excellent p-type zT of ≈1.3 is reached at 1012 K, which is the highest value in ZrBeSi-type compounds. This work uncovers the relation between electron-phonon coupling and crystal symmetry in quasi-2D systems, which broadens the horizon to develop high mobility semiconductors for electronic and energy conversion applications.