A large enhancement of the thermoelectric figure of merit is reported in single crystalline films of CrN. The strong reduction of the lattice thermal conductivity in the rock-salt phase of this material is shown to be related to intrinsic lattice instabilities, which is similar to the resonant bonding effect proposed for cubic IV-VI compounds. These results demonstrate that useful ideas from classic thermoelectrics and phase change materials can be extended to transition metal nitrides and oxides.
This is the accepted version of the following article: Quintela, Camilo X.; Podkaminer, Jacob P.; Luckyanova, Maria N.; Paudel, Tula R.; Thies, Eric L.; Hillsberry, Daniel A.; Tenne, Dmitri A.; Tsymbal, Evgeny Y.; Chen, Gang; Eom, Chang-Beom; and Rivadulla, Francisco. (2015). Epitaxial CrN Thin Films with High Thermoelectric Figure of Merit. Advanced Materials, 27(19), 3032-3037, which has been published in final form at doi: 10.1002/adma.201500110
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/dmitri_tenne/45/
For complete list of authors, please see article.