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A3: High temperature materials
The increase of fossil fuels consumption and carbon emissions has led to finding new ways of energy generation. One of the most promising and convenient ways to enhance the sustainability of the electricity is thermoelectricity (TE), which directly converts waste heat into electricity and vice versa. TE technology has been used for several areas including infrared sensors, computer chips, satellites, and most recently automotive and engine related applications. However, the high cost and low operating temperatures of TE materials remain significant challenges for the wide commercial application of this technology. ZnO, a cost-effective and eco-friendly wide bandgap material, has shown great promises in high temperature TE applications due to its distinctive properties such as high thermal stability, high electrical conductivity and Seebeck coefficient. This material system has been successfully incorporated in advanced electronic technologies, such as photovoltaic devices, gas sensors, and transistors. However, only few studies in previous literature have discussed TE properties of ZnO materials, in particularly thin film ZnO structure. Therefore, the focus of this work is to investigate the structural-property relations of ZnO material grown by metal organic vapor deposition (MOCVD) method. In this work, we report an investigation of the structure- and doping-dependent TE behavior of n-type ZnO to distinguish the interrelationship between the structural and thermoelectric properties, the Seebeck coefficient, the electrical conductivity, and the mobility, and their dependence on carrier concentration by using X-ray diffraction (XRD), photoluminescence (PL), van-der Paw Hall, and two probe temperature gradient methods.
