To realize a thermoelectric power generator, typically a junction between two materials with different Seebeck coefficient needs to be fabricated. Such difference in Seebeck coefficients can be induced by doping, which renders difficult when working with two-dimensional (2d) materials. Here, we employ substrate effects to form a thermoelectric junction in ultra-thin few-layer MoS2 films. We investigated the junctions with a combination of scanning photocurrent microscopy and scanning thermal microscopy. This allows us to reveal that thermoelectric junctions form across the substrate-engineered parts. We attribute this to a gating effect induced by interfacial charges in combination with alterations in the electron-phonon scattering mechanisms. This work demonstrates that substrate engineering is a promising strategy to develop future compact thin-film thermoelectric power generators.
@article{arxiv.2301.00974,
title = {Single-material MoS$_{2}$ thermoelectric junction enabled by substrate engineering},
author = {Mohammadali Razeghi and Jean Spiece and Oğuzhan Oğuz and Doruk Pehlivanoğlu and Yubin Huang and Ali Sheraz and Phillip S. Dobson and Jonathan M. R. Weaver and Pascal Gehring and T. Serkan Kasırga},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.00974},
year = {2023}
}