Quantized thermoelectric Hall effect induces giant power factor in a topological semimetal

Fei Han, Nina Andrejevic, Thanh Nguyen, Vladyslav Kozii, Quynh T. Nguyen, Tom Hogan, Zhiwei Ding, Ricardo Pablo-Pedro, Shreya Parjan, Brian Skinner, Ahmet Alatas, Ercan Alp, Songxue Chi, Jaime Fernandez-Baca, Shengxi Huang, Liang Fu, Mingda Li

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

54 Scopus citations

Abstract

Thermoelectrics are promising by directly generating electricity from waste heat. However, (sub-)room-temperature thermoelectrics have been a long-standing challenge due to vanishing electronic entropy at low temperatures. Topological materials offer a new avenue for energy harvesting applications. Recent theories predicted that topological semimetals at the quantum limit can lead to a large, non-saturating thermopower and a quantized thermoelectric Hall conductivity approaching a universal value. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the non-saturating thermopower and quantized thermoelectric Hall effect in the topological Weyl semimetal (WSM) tantalum phosphide (TaP). An ultrahigh longitudinal thermopower Sxx~1.1×103μVK−1 and giant power factor ~525μWcm−1K−2 are observed at ~40 K, which is largely attributed to the quantized thermoelectric Hall effect. Our work highlights the unique quantized thermoelectric Hall effect realized in a WSM toward low-temperature energy harvesting applications.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number6167
JournalNature communications
Volume11
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2020

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Chemistry
  • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
  • General Physics and Astronomy

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