Thermoelectric properties of p-type MnSe

Semiconducting manganese selenide (MnSe), crystalizing in a cubic structure with a wide band gap, is focused on in this work for its potential as an ecofriendly thermoelectric material. Pristine MnSe exhibits a low carrier concentration of similar to 1.3 x 10(17)cm(-3) at room temperature, which can be dramatically increased to similar to 2.6 x 10(21)cm(-3) primarily resulting from the Mn-vacancy introduced by Na-doping at Mn site. The broad range of carrier concentration not only enables a reliable prediction of the electrical transport properties using a single parabolic band (SPB) model with the acoustic scattering, but also provides a well understanding of its underlying material physics. Such a doping and the simultaneously induced Mn-vacancies provide additional phonon scattering, leading to a reduced lattice thermal conductivity of similar to 1.2 W/m-K at high temperatures. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.