Improvement of thermoelectric properties and their correlations with electron effective mass in Cu1.98SxSe1−x

Sulphur doping effects on the crystal structures, thermoelectric properties, density-of-states, and effective mass in Cu1.98SxSe1−x were studied based on the electrical and thermal transport property measurements, and first-principles calculations. The X-ray diffraction patterns and Rietveld refinements indicate that room temperature Cu1.98SxSe1−x (x=0, 0.02, 0.08, 0.16) and Cu1.98SxSe1−x (x=0.8, 0.9, 1.0) have the same crystal structure as monoclinic-Cu2Se and orthorhombic-Cu2S, respectively. Sulphur doping can greatly enhance zT values when x is in the range of 0.8≤x≤1.0. Furthermore, all doped samples show stable thermoelectric compatibility factors over a broad temperature range from 700 to 1000K, which could greatly benefit their practical applications. First-principles calculations indicate that both the electron density-of-sates and the effective mass for all the compounds exhibit nonmonotonic sulphur doping dependence. It is concluded that the overall thermoelectric performance of the Cu1.98SxSe1−x system is mainly correlated with the electron effective mass and the density-of-states.