[institut] Reminder - SCL Seminar: Ivana Savic, Wednesday 13 June, 14:00

[Nenad Vukmirovic]

Dear colleagues,

This is a reminder about the seminar that will take place today.

Best regards,

-- 
Dr Nenad Vukmirovic,
Research Professor,
Scientific Computing Laboratory,
Institute of Physics Belgrade,
Serbia.
URL: http://www.scl.rs/nenad



---

Dear colleagues,

You are cordially invited to the SCL seminar of the Center for the Study 
of Complex Systems, which will be held on Wednesday, 13 June 2018 at 
14:00 in the library reading room “Dr Dragan Popović" of the Institute 
of Physics Belgrade. The talk entitled

Electronic and Thermoelectric Transport in PbTe: Insights from First 
Principles Calculations

will be given by Dr Ivana Savić (Tyndall National Institute, Cork, 
Ireland).
Abstract of the talk:

Thermoelectric materials could play an important role in the development 
of energy harvesting technologies due to their ability to convert waste 
heat into electricity [1]. It is challenging to control and enhance the 
efficiency of thermoelectric energy conversion in a material because of 
the conflicting requirements for the desired physical properties i.e. 
high electrical conductivity and low thermal conductivity. Exploiting 
the fascinating properties of materials near soft mode phase transitions 
is an emerging concept in the quest to increase thermoelectric 
efficiency [2,3]. The underlying idea is that soft phonon modes lead to 
intrinsically low thermal conductivity, while possibly preserving high 
electronic conductivity. In this talk I will focus on the unusual 
electronic transport properties of n-type PbTe, which is a classic 
thermoelectric material that exists near a soft optical mode phase 
transition. Our first principles calculations show that most scattering 
mechanisms in PbTe are very weak, with the exception of that due to 
polar optical phonons [4,5]. Our results suggest that good 
thermoelectric materials may be found among weakly polar materials with 
symmetry forbidden scattering mechanisms.

[1] G. J. Snyder and E. S. Toberer, Nat. Mater. 7, 105 (2008).
[2] L.-D. Zhao et al, Nature 508, 373 (2014).
[3] R. M. Murphy, E. D. Murray, S. Fahy, and I. Savic, Phys. Rev. B 93, 
104304 (2016);  Phys. Rev. B 95, 144302 (2017).
[4] A. R. Murphy, F. Murphy-Armando, S. Fahy, and I. Savic, submitted.
[5] J. Cao, J. D. Querales-Flores, A. R. Murphy, S. Fahy, and I. Savic, 
in preparation.

Best regards,

-- 
Dr Nenad Vukmirovic,
Research Professor,
Scientific Computing Laboratory,
Institute of Physics Belgrade,
Serbia.
URL: http://www.scl.rs/nenad