Thermoelectric transport properties of semiconductor film-based epitaxial monolayer graphene

ABSTRACT

Epitaxial graphene on semiconductor films has potential for various applications due to its thermoelectric properties. We investigated factors affecting its thermo power using a solid-state physics approach, considering the interaction between the substrate and graphene, and exploring the effects of chemical potential, temperature, anharmonic vibrations of atoms, phonon-drag, and film thickness. Our results show that anharmonic effects significantly enhance the thermopower caused by electrons, especially at higher temperatures. Additionally, we observed an increase in total thermopower due to phonon-drag, although it has negligible effects at or above room temperature. We found that the thermopower on size-quantized semiconductor films is significantly higher than on metal conductor films and bulk semiconductor substrates. Decreasing the film thickness further increases the thermo power, providing an effective way to enhance the thermo electric properties of epitaxial graphene. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the thermoelectric properties of epitaxial graphene on semiconductor films and offer valuable insights for future applications.

KEYWORDS:

• Semiconductor film-based epitaxial graphene
• thermopower
• phonon-drag
• anharmonic effect
• semiconductor film thickness

Acknowledgments

This work was mainly supported by the Chongqing Natural Science Foundation (No. cstc2020jcyj- msxmX0920), Science and Technology Research Program of Chongqing Municipal Education Commission (No. KJQN202101304), Yongchuan District Natural Science Foundation (No. 2021yc-jckx20045), Science and Technology Research Program of Chongqing Municipal Education Commission (No. HZ2021013).

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10667857.2023.2214776

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Chongqing Municipal Education Commission [HZ2021013]; Chongqing Municipal Education Commission [KJQN202101304]; Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing [cstc2020jcyj- msxmX0920]; Yongchuan District Natural Science Foundation [2021yc-jckx20045].