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Colossal Seebeck coefficient in strongly correlated semiconductor FeSb2
For more than a decade strongly correlated semiconductors and Kondo insulators have been considered as potential thermoelectric materials. Such materials have large d- or f- character of the electronic band structure close to the Fermi level that theoretically leads to Seebeck fficoefficients (S) with large magnitudes. In this work it is shown for the first time that the strongly correlated semiconductor FeSb2 exhibits a colossal Seebeck coefficient of similar to- 45000 mu VK-1 at 10 K. The thermoelectric power factor PF = S-2 center dot 1, where. is the electrical resistivity, reaches a record high value of similar to 2300 WK-2 cm(-1) at 12K and is 65 times larger than that of the state- of- the- art Bi2Te3- based thermoelectric materials. However, due to a large lattice thermal conductivity the dimensionless thermoelectric. figure of merit is only 0.005 at 12 K. Nonetheless, the potential of FeSb2 as a future solid-state thermoelectric cooling device at cryogenic temperatures is underlined.