Enhancement of thermoelectric figure of merit by using nonequilibrium state between electrons and phonons

We investigated the thermoelectric properties of a metal/semiconductor multilayer by using a simple parabolic band model and two-temperature model. The multilayer enables not only reducing thermal conductivity but also enhancing the power factor by using a nonequilibrium state between electrons and phonons created by the interface. Our results revealed that combining a metal with low lattice thermal conductivity and a semiconductor with high lattice thermal conductivity can compensate for their weak points each other in the thermoelectric properties, resulting in the remarkable enhancement of the figure of merit.