Intrinsic Seebeck coefficients of 2D polycrystalline PtSe2 semiconducting films through two-step annealing

Because of the high contact resistance between a metal and a film, evaluating the intrinsic Seebeck coefficient of large-area two-dimensional (2D) semiconducting films with high-resistance is challenging. Here, we report a simple scheme to measure the large-area Seebeck coefficients of 2D polycrystalline platinum diselenide (PtSe2) thin films, whose electrical resistance (>2 M omega) is too high to measure the thermoelectric (TE) properties, by thermal annealing. As-prepared PtSe2 thin films deposited on sapphire substrates and treated by a two-step thermal annealing process at 574 K exhibited an intrinsic Seebeck coefficient > similar to 160 mu V K-1, which is 400% higher than that of the single-crystalline PtSe2 bulk, under a temperature gradient of up to 5 K along the samples. In addition, we confirm that the in-plane Seebeck coefficient of the two-step annealed samples was independent of the metal electrode. In addition, the role of thermal annealing in intrinsically-high-resistance 2D PtSe2 semiconducting films based on the atomic-scale crystallographic characteristics of these films and the measured contact resistance between the metal and PtSe2 layer is further discussed. Our finding represents an important achievement in understanding and measuring the Seebeck effect of high-TE-performance 2D layered transition metal dichalcogenide materials.