This makes them particularly attractive for the emerging for the autonomous energy supply of microsensors and other tiny electronic components.
In order to make the materials more efficient, at the same time heat transport via the lattice vibrations must be suppressed and the mobility of the electrons increased – a hurdle that has often hindered research until now.
Powder of an alloy of iron, vanadium, tantalum and aluminum used
Published in the journal Nature Communications, the study demonstrates that by incorporating chemically and structurally distinct archetypal topological insulator Bi1−xSbx at the grain boundaries, charge, and heat transport can be decoupled, “resulting in a reduction of κL, and simultaneously, in an unexpected increase of μW.”