Thermoelectric properties of tin clathrates under hydrostatic pressure Original Research Article

We report the temperature dependence of electrical resistance (R) and thermopower (S) of clathrate Cs8Sn44 under high pressure up to 1.2 GPa. We observe a reversible gap widening, prominent relaxation effect of R, irreversible increase of |S| under high pressure. We also find that the power factor S2σ (σ: electrical conductivity) reaches a maximum at pressure of 0.3 GPa. Comparison of the experimental results with band structure calculations suggests that the intrinsic vacancy in the clathrate structure of Cs8Sn44 plays an important role in transport properties under high pressure. Measurements on Cs8Zn4Sn42, a clathrate which has defects other than vacancies, are compared with Cs8Sn44. The results indicate that replacing Sn by Zn has similar effect as the intrinsic vacancy on S.