Thermoelectric performance of SnTe has been found to enhance with isovalent doping of alkaline and transition metal elements where most of these elements have solubility of less than 13%. We propose a strategy of doping rare earth element Yb to enhance the thermoelectric performance of SnTe. With heavy atomic mass and strong spin-orbit coupling, even the mild doping of Yb (~ 5%) is enough to create a degeneracy via band-convergence which enhances the density of states near Fermi level and improve overall performance. Our transport data and first-principles calculations corroborate that nearly 5% Yb is an efficient dopant to achieve thermoelectric response which is equivalent to 9% of Mn doping. The results are useful for understanding the environment-friendly thermoelectric SnTe.
@article{arxiv.1811.04389,
title = {Rare Earth Doping and Effective Band-Convergence in SnTe for Improved Thermoelectric Performance},
author = {Somnath Acharya and Dibyendu Dey and Tulika Maitra and Ajay Soni and A. Taraphder},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1811.04389},
year = {2022}
}