Thermoelectric properties of AgGaTe ₂ and related chalcopyrite structure materials

We present an analysis of the potential thermoelectric performance of p-type AgGaTe ₂, which has already shown a ZT of 0.8 with partial optimization, and observe that the same band-structure features, such as a mixture of light and heavy bands and isotropic transport, that lead to this good performance are present in certain other ternary chalcopyrite structure semiconductors. We find that optimal performance of AgGaTe ₂ will be found for hole concentrations between 4 ×1019 and 2 ×1020 cm ^-3 at 900 K, and 2 ×1019 and 1020 cm ^-3 at 700 K, and that certain other chalcopyrite semiconductors might show good thermoelectric performance at similar doping ranges and temperatures if not for higher lattice thermal conductivity.