Conventional strategies for advancing thermoelectrics via nanocompositing focus on the enhanced phonon scattering induced by nanostructured phase. Here, an effective approach of combining carrier mobility promotion and strengthened phonons scattering to simultaneously improve electrical and thermal transport properties is demonstrated. For the p-type YbZn₂Sb₂ with InSb nanoinclusions, the Hall mobility is effectively enhanced by InSb in the whole measured temperature, from 56 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ to 162 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ at 300 K. Meanwhile, the carrier density optimization by tuning Yb vacancies leads to 46% improvement in the Seebeck coefficient, overcoming the negative contribution from InSb. Moreover, with the help of interface scattering caused by nanoinclusions, the lattice thermal conductivity is reduced by 45% at 720 K. As a result, the thermoelectric figure of merit ZT is enhanced nearly a factor of three. We believe our method provides a “combined strategy” to enhance thermoelectric performance of YbZn₂Sb₂ based compounds and should be applicable to other thermoelectric materials.

通过纳米复合材料推进热电学的常规策略集中在纳米结构相引起的声子散射增强上。在这里，展示了一种有效的方法，将提高载流子迁移率和增强声子散射相结合，同时改善电和热传输性能。对于具有InSb纳米夹杂物的p型YbZn ₂ Sb ₂，在整个测量温度范围内，从56 cm ²  V ^-1  s ^-1到162 cm ²  V ^-1  s ^-1，InSb有效地增强了霍尔迁移率。在300 K时。通过调整Yb空位来优化载流子密度可导致塞贝克系数提高46％，克服了InSb的负面影响。此外，借助由纳米夹杂物引起的界面散射，在720 K下晶格热导率降低了45％。结果，热电性能因数ZT几乎提高了三倍。我们认为我们的方法提供了一种“组合策略”来增强YbZn ₂ Sb ₂基化合物的热电性能，应该适用于其他热电材料。