S D Mahanti and D Bilc 2004 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 16 S5277 doi:10.1088/0953-8984/16/44/024
S D Mahanti and D Bilc
Show affiliationsLead chalcogenide salts PbSe and PbTe are IV–VI narrow gap semiconductors whose study over last several decades has been motivated by their importance in infrared detectors, lasers and thermoelectrics. Recently a class of systems, AgSbPb2n−2Ten, has been found to be excellent high temperature thermoelectrics. Since electronic properties of semiconductors in general and thermoelectric behaviour in particular, are dominated by defects, we have carried out ab initio electronic structure calculations of Ag and Sb substitutional defects in PbTe. We find that these defects give rise to deep defect states and the electronic structure near the gap depends sensitively on the micro structural arrangements of these defects. The modified electronic structure may be responsible for the observed high temperature thermoelectric properties of the above compounds.
72.20.Pa Thermoelectric and thermomagnetic effects
71.15.-m Methods of electronic structure calculations
Issue 44 (10 November 2004)
Received 26 August 2004
Published 22 October 2004
S D Mahanti and D Bilc 2004 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 16 S5277
Merced Montesinos 2001 Class. Quantum Grav. 18 1847
Souichi Telada et al 2005 Class. Quantum Grav. 22 S975
Martin Durant and Marten H. van Kerkwijk 2006 ApJ 652 576
Slava G Turyshev et al 2004 Class. Quantum Grav. 21 2773
D H Coule 2001 Class. Quantum Grav. 18 4265
L. Chen et al. 2008 ApJ 680 539
S. O'hira et al 2000 Nucl. Fusion 40 519
P Akueson and D Gurevich 1999 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 32 4183
V Vonka et al 1981 J. Phys. E: Sci. Instrum. 14 1336