Thermoelectric effects in topological crystalline insulators

Babak Zare Rameshti, Reza Asgari

Published 2016-07-25Version 1

We investigate the electrical conductivity and thermoelectric effects in topological crystalline insulators in the presence of short- and long-range impurity interactions. We employ the generalized Boltzmann formalism for anisotropic Fermi surface systems. The conductivity exhibits a local minimum as doping varies owing to the Van Hove singularity in the density of states originated from the saddle point in the surface states band structure. Suppression of the inter-band scattering of the charge carriers at high-energy Dirac points results in a maximum in the electrical conductivity. Whenever the Fermi level passes an extremum in the conductivity, Seebeck coefficient changes sign. In addition, it is revealed that profound thermoelectric effects can be attained around these extrema points.