Performance analysis of Seebeck-driven transverse thermoelectric generation based on phenomenological calculation.

We phenomenologically calculate the performance of the recently-observed Seebeck-driven transverse thermoelectric generation (STTG) [W. Zhou et al. Nat. Mater. (2021), doi:10.1038/s41563-020-00884-2] for various systems in terms of the thermopower, power factor, and figure of merit to demonstrate the usefulness of STTG. The STTG system consists of a closed circuit comprising thermoelectric and magnetic materials which exhibit the Seebeck and anomalous Hall effects, respectively. When a temperature gradient is applied to the hybrid system, the Seebeck effect in the thermoelectric material layer generates a longitudinal charge current in the closed circuit and the charge current subsequently drives the anomalous Hall effect in the magnetic material layer. The anomalous Hall voltage driven by the Seebeck effect has a similar symmetry to the transverse thermoelectric conversion based on the anomalous Nernst effect. We find that the thermoelectric properties of STTG can be much better than those of the anomalous Nernst effect by increasing the Seebeck coefficient and anomalous Hall angle of the thermoelectric and magnetic materials, respectively, as well as by optimizing their dimensions. We also formulate the electronic cooling performance in the STTG system, confirming the reciprocal relation for the hybrid transverse thermoelectric conversion.