Adiabatic transverse thermoelectric conversion enhanced by heat current manipulation in artificially tilted multilayers

Abstract

We phenomenologically formulate and experimentally observe an adiabatic transverse thermoelectric conversion enhanced by a heat current re-orientation in artificially tilted multilayers (ATMLs). By alternately stacking two materials with different thermal conductivities and rotating its multilayered structure with respect to a longitudinal temperature gradient, off-diagonal components in the thermal conductivity tensor are induced. This off-diagonal thermal conduction (ODTC) generates a finite transverse temperature gradient and Seebeck-effect-induced thermopower in the adiabatic condition, which is superposed on the isothermal transverse thermopower driven by the off-diagonal Seebeck effect (ODSE). In this study, we calculate and observe the two-dimensional temperature distribution and the resultant transverse thermopower in ATMLs comprising thermoelectric Co$_{2}$MnGa Heusler alloys and Bi$_{2-a}$Sb$_{a}$Te$_{3}$ compounds. By changing the tilt angle from 0{\deg} to 90{\deg}, the transverse temperature gradient obviously appeared in the middle angles and the transverse thermopower increases up to -116.1 ${\mu}$V/K in Co$_{2}$MnGa/Bi$_{0.2}$Sb$_{1.8}$Te$_{3}$-based ATML at the tilt angle of 45{\deg} whereas the isothermal contribution is estimated to be -82.6 ${\mu}$V/K from the analytical calculation. This hybrid action derived from ODTC results in the significant variation of the maximum reduced efficiency for transverse thermoelectric conversion from 3.1% in the isothermal limit to 8.1% in the adiabatic limit.