Interface-driven seebeck effect in two-dimensional trilayer-stacked PtTe2/MoS2/MoS2 heterostructures via electron–electron interactions

Two-dimensional (2D) platinum telluride (PtTe2), which is one of the promising metallic transition metal dichalcogenides, has been proven as an essential candidate for electronic devices, magnetic devices, type-II Dirac fermions, topological superconductors, and other optoelectronic applications. However, the formation and thermal transport as important thermoelectric (TE) device applications have not been realized in large-area 2D PtTe2 films due to their semi-metallic properties. Here, we report an innovative approach to enhance the in-plane TE power factors by piling the metallic PtTe2 films on high-resistance (> 10 MΩ) intrinsic MoS2 films to form bilayer-PtTe2/MoS2 (5 nm/7 nm)//sapphire and trilayer-PtTe2/MoS2/MoS2 (5 nm/7 nm/7 nm)//sapphire heterostructures via wet-transfer stacking method. Such approaches can be achieved by utilizing 2D/2D heterostructure to increase the electron effective mass due to the strong electron–electron interaction at interface under temperature gradient along the samples and ultimately increase Seebeck coefficients via interface-driven Seebeck effect along with a metallic high-conductivity top-PtTe2 films. The trilayer-stacked PtTe2/MoS2/MoS2 heterostructures exhibit an extremely high Seebeck coefficient of −21.6 μV/K and power factor of ∼0.2 mW/m·K2, which are 231 % and ∼727 %, higher than those of the metallic 5-nm-thick single PtTe2 film on the sapphire substrate, respectively. Our new physics and observation can pave the way toward an effective strategy for understating 2D/2D TMDC heterostructure materials for high Fig.-of-merit TE energy harvesting devices.