Browsing by Author "Xue, Wenhua"

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    Vacancy-mediated anomalous phononic and electronic transport in defective half-Heusler ZrNiBi
    (Springer Nature, 2023) Ren, Wuyang; Xue, Wenhua; Guo, Shuping; He, Ran; Deng, Liangzi; Song, Shaowei; Sotnikov, Andrei; Nielsch, Kornelius; van den Brink, Jeroen; Gao, Guanhui; Chen, Shuo; Han, Yimo; Wu, Jiang; Chu, Ching-Wu; Wang, Zhiming; Wang, Yumei; Ren, Zhifeng
    Studies of vacancy-mediated anomalous transport properties have flourished in diverse fields since these properties endow solid materials with fascinating photoelectric, ferroelectric, and spin-electric behaviors. Although phononic and electronic transport underpin the physical origin of thermoelectrics, vacancy has only played a stereotyped role as a scattering center. Here we reveal the multifunctionality of vacancy in tailoring the transport properties of an emerging thermoelectric material, defective n-type ZrNiBi. The phonon kinetic process is mediated in both propagating velocity and relaxation time: vacancy-induced local soft bonds lower the phonon velocity while acoustic-optical phonon coupling, anisotropic vibrations, and point-defect scattering induced by vacancy shorten the relaxation time. Consequently, defective ZrNiBi exhibits the lowest lattice thermal conductivity among the half-Heusler family. In addition, a vacancy-induced flat band features prominently in its electronic band structure, which is not only desirable for electron-sufficient thermoelectric materials but also interesting for driving other novel physical phenomena. Finally, better thermoelectric performance is established in a ZrNiBi-based compound. Our findings not only demonstrate a promising thermoelectric material but also promote the fascinating vacancy-mediated anomalous transport properties for multidisciplinary explorations.