Enhancing the thermoelectric properties of super-lattice Al2O3/ZnO atomic film via interface confinement
Source abstract
Abstract
Abstract Aluminum oxide (Al 2 O 3 )/zinc oxide (ZnO) thin films deposited via atomic layer deposition (ALD) are demonstrated to enhance their thermoelectric properties by manipulating them with a nano-thick Al 2 O 3 interface. The overall superlattice structure is tuned by varying the ZnO ALD sequence and the Al 2 O 3 ALD sequence while maintaining the same composition. An aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) thin film is deposited at 250 °C, and the Al 2 O 3 thickness in the superlattice is gradually increased from 0.13 nm to 1.23 nm. The total film composition is fixed at 2% AZO. We observe that an efficient superlattice structure is made with a specific Al 2 O 3 thickness. The thermal conductivity is significantly decreased from 0.57 W/mK to 0.26 W/mK as the thickness of the Al 2 O 3 layer is increased. Additionally, the absolute Seebeck coefficient is increased from 14 μV/K to 65 μV/K. This may be caused by the interface confinement effect and interface scattering between the ZnO layer and the Al 2 O 3 layer. The figure of merit ZT value is 0.14 for the most efficient structure.
Source: openaire · Quality: candidate unverified · Source record ↗
Research context
OpenAlex topics: Advanced Thermoelectric Materials and Devices · Thermal properties of materials · Thermal Expansion and Ionic Conductivity
SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.
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