High-Throughput Screening for Advanced Thermoelectric Materials: Diamond-Like ABX2 Compounds

High-throughput (HTP) calculations are a highly promising direction for the discovery of novel functional materials. Here we use an HTP framework to investigate the electronic structures and p-type thermoelectric properties of the ABX₂ compounds with diamond-like structures. We show application of HTP both to identify compounds and also to identify underlying trends. A total of 65 entries out of 84 908 in the Materials Informatics Platform are selected for this study. The electronic structures and chemical-bonding analyses reveal that there exists a general conductive network consisting of the anion X sublattice, which dominates the electrical transport properties of the compounds. Electrical and thermal transport properties of the 41 pnictide and chalcogenide compounds with sufficient band gaps are studied. Pnictide compounds have relatively smaller Seebeck coefficients than the chalcogenide compounds. This is due to the smaller effective masses around the valence band maxima. The electrical conductivities and power factors, however, are better in pnictide compounds. This is because pnictide compounds have high electronic group velocities and electronic relaxation times. Combined with the predictions of lattice thermal conductivities based on the Slack model, 12 novel p-type and n-type ABX₂ materials with high ZT values are predicted.