Doping strategy in metavalently bonded materials for advancing thermoelectric performance

Metavalent bonding is a unique bonding mechanism responsible for exceptional properties of materials used in thermoelectric, phase-change, and optoelectronic devices. For thermoelectrics, the desired performance of metavalently bonded materials can be tuned by doping foreign atoms. Incorporating dopants to form solid solutions or second phases is a crucial route to tailor the charge and phonon transport. Yet, it is difficult to predict if dopants will form a secondary phase or a solid solution, which hinders the tailoring of microstructures and material properties. Here, we propose that the solid solution is more easily formed between metavalently bonded solids, while precipitates prefer to exist in systems mixed by metavalently bonded and other bonding mechanisms. We demonstrate this in a metavalently bonded GeTe compound alloyed with different sulfides. We find that S can dissolve in the GeTe matrix when alloyed with metavalently bonded PbS. In contrast, S-rich second phases are omnipresent via alloying with covalently bonded GeS and SnS. Benefiting from the reduced phonon propagation and the optimized electrical transport properties upon doping PbS in GeTe, a high figure-of-merit ZT of 2.2 at 773 K in (Ge0.84Sb0.06Te0.9)(PbSe)0.05(PbS)0.05 is realized. This strategy can be applied to other metavalently bonded materials to design properties beyond thermoelectrics.