Substrate engineered thermovoltage generation in 2d materials

Thermoelectric generators have tremendous potential in scavenging waste energy from many processes. 2d materials can provide excellent alternatives thanks to the large and tunable Seebeck coefficients in some semiconducting materials and large figure of merits can be obtained. One challange is to create thermoelectric junctions in 2d materials. In this study we report that this challange can be overcome using substrate engineering strategies and demostrated that thermoelectric junctions can be formed to create a thermovoltage. We used scanning photocurrent microscopy in conjunction with scanning thermal microscopy to illustrate the underlying physics of substrate engineered thermoelectric junction formation in 2d materials.