High thermoelectric performance in metal phosphides MP₂ (M = Co, Rh and Ir): a theoretical prediction from...

Although metal phosphides have good electronic properties and high stabilities, they have been overlooked in general as thermoelectrics based on expectation of high thermal conductivity. Here we propose the metal phosphides MP₂ (M = Co, Rh and Ir) as promising thermoelectrics through first-principles calculations of their thermoelectric properties. By using lattice dynamics calculations within unified theory of thermal transport in crystal and glass, we obtain the lattice thermal conductivities κ _l of MP₂ as 0.63, 1.21 and 1.81 W m^-1 K at 700 K for M = Co, Rh and Ir, respio ectively. Our calculations for crystalline structure, phonon dispersion, Grüneisen parameters and cumulative κ _l reveal that such low κ _l originates from strong rattling vibrations of M atoms and lattice anharmonicity, which significantly suppress heat-carrying acoustic phonon modes coupled with low-lying optical modes. Using mBJ exchange-correlation functional, we further calculate the electronic structures and transport properties, which are in good agreement with available experimental data, evaluating the relaxation time of charge carrier within deformation potential theory. We predict ultrahigh thermopower factors as 10.2, 7.1 and 6.4 mW m^-1 K² at 700 K for M = Co, Rh and Ir, being superior to the conventional thermoelectrics GeTe. Finally, we estimate their thermoelectric performance by computing figure of merit ZT, finding that upon n-type doping ZT can reach ∼1.7 at 700 K specially for CoP₂. We believe that our work offers a novel materials platform to search for high-performance thermoelectrics using metal phosphides.