Large, nonsaturating thermopower in a quantizing magnetic field

Abstract

The thermoelectric effect is the generation of an electrical voltage from a temperature gradient in a solid material due to the diffusion of free charge carriers from hot to cold. Identifying materials with large thermoelectric response is crucial for the development of novel electric generators and coolers. In this paper we consider theoretically the thermopower of Dirac/Weyl semimetals subjected to a quantizing magnetic field. We contrast their thermoelectric properties with those of traditional heavily-doped semiconductors and we show that, under a sufficiently large magnetic field, the thermopower of Dirac/Weyl semimetals grows linearly with the field without saturation and can reach extremely high values. Our results suggest an immediate pathway for achieving record-high thermopower and thermoelectric figure of merit, and they compare well with a recent experiment on Pb$_{1-x}$Sn$_x$Se.

6+3 pages, 4 figures; update discussion of experiments and device performance