Very heavily electron-doped CrSi2 as a high performance high temperature thermoelectric material

Abstract

We analyze the thermoelectric behavior, using first principles and Boltzmann transport calculations, of very heavily electron-doped CrSi2 and find that at temperatures of 1250 K and electron dopings of $1-4 times10^{21}$ cm$^{-3}$, thermopowers as large or larger in magnitude than 200 $mathrm{mu}$V/K may be found. Such high thermopowers at such high carrier concentrations are extremely rare, and suggest that good thermolectric performance (i.e. ZT) may be found in these ranges of temperature and doping.