Thermoelectric performances in transparent ZnO films including nanowires as phonon scatterers

We report the fabrication technique and electrical propertis of embedded-ZnO nanowires (NWs) structure for high-performance transparent thermoelectric materials. In fabrication technique, we revealed that the length of NW is less than 2 μm for embedding NWs. Our embedded-ZnO NWs structures showed a little smaller electrical conductivities than ZnO films (without ZnO NWs) at the carrier concentration of ∼ 10¹⁸ cm^-3. However, at high carrier concentration, our embedded-ZnO NWs structures are expected to show high thermoelectric performances due to the drastic reduction of κ and smaller σ degradation, because there is the difference of MFP between electron and phonon. Our work showed the design guide to enhance the performance of transparent thermoelectric materials.