Largely Suppressed Magneto-Thermal Conductivity and Enhanced Magneto-Thermoelectric Properties in PtSn.

Highly conductive topological semimetals with exotic electronic structures offer fertile ground for the investigation of the electrical and thermal transport behavior of quasiparticles. Here, we find that the layer-structured Dirac semimetal PtSn exhibits a largely suppressed thermal conductivity under a magnetic field. At low temperatures, a dramatic decrease in the thermal conductivity of PtSn by more than two orders of magnitude is obtained at 9 T. Moreover, PtSn shows both strong longitudinal and transverse thermoelectric responses under a magnetic field. Large power factor and Nernst power factor of approximately 80-100 W·cm·K are obtained around 15 K in various magnetic fields. As a result, the thermoelectric figure of merit is strongly enhanced by more than 30 times, compared to that without a magnetic field. This work provides a paradigm for the decoupling of the electron and hole transport behavior of highly conductive topological semimetals and is helpful for developing topological semimetals for thermoelectric energy conversion.