Quadruple-band synglisis enables high thermoelectric efficiency in earth-abundant tin sulfide crystals

Thermoelectrics have been limited by the scarcity of their constituent elements, especially telluride. The earth-abundant, wide-bandgap ( E g ≈ 46 k B T ) tin sulfide (SnS) has shown promising performance in its crystal form. We improved the thermoelectric efficiency in SnS crystals by promoting the convergence of energy and momentum of four valance bands, termed quadruple-band synglisis. We introduced more Sn vacancies to activate quadruple-band synglisis and facilitate carrier transport by inducing SnS 2 in selenium (Se)–alloyed SnS, leading to a high dimensionless figure of merit ( ZT ) of ~1.0 at 300 kelvin and an average ZT of ~1.3 at 300 to 773 kelvin in p-type SnS crystals. We further obtained an…