Electrical conductivity in nanostructured ZnO bulks is limited by the inherently low carrier mobility caused by the high density of grain boundaries and interfaces. In this study, Zn1−xTaxO (x = 0, 0.01, 0.02, 0.03) with micro/nanoplatelet structures composed of nearly coherent dense grain boundaries with a low misorientation angle of ∼4° between the grains was successfully fabricated. Despite the presence of a significant amount of grain boundaries and interfaces in the sintered bulk material, a high carrier mobility (52.2 cm2 V−1 s−1) was obtained in the composition Zn0.99Ta0.01O, which is comparable to the value shown by ZnO single crystals and far higher than their ordinary nanostructured counterparts (<15 cm2 V−1 s−1). In addition, the distortion of the density of states increased effective mass induced by Ta 5d hybridization in ZnO caused a Seebeck coefficient of −290 μV K−1 at 1002 K resulting in a high power factor of 15.2 × 10−4 W m−1 K−2 at 1002 K.

中文翻译：

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晶界工程在掺钽的氧化锌中实现高热电功率因数

纳米结构的 ZnO 块体的电导率受到高密度晶界和界面引起的固有低载流子迁移率的限制。在这项研究中，Zn1−xTaxO (x = 0, 0.01, 0.02, 0.03) 具有微/纳米片结构，由几乎连贯的致密晶界组成，晶粒之间的低取向角约为 4°。尽管烧结块体材料中存在大量晶界和界面，但在成分 Zn0.99Ta0.01O 中获得了高载流子迁移率 (52.2 cm2 V-1 s-1)，与所示值相当由 ZnO 单晶构成，远高于它们的普通纳米结构对应物（<15 cm2 V-1 s-1）。此外，