High-temperature oxide thermoelectrics

摘要

We have evaluated the power factor of transition metal oxides at high temperatures using the Heikes formula and the Ioffe-Regel conductivity. The evaluated power factor is found to be nearly independent of carrier concentration in a wide range of doping, and explains the experimental data for cobalt oxides well. This suggests that the same power factor can be obtained with a thermopower larger than 2ks/e, and also suggests a reasonably high value of the dimensionless figure of merit ZT. We propose an oxide thermoelectric power generator by using materials having a thermopower larger than 300 μV/K.