Abstract
The increase in energy demands is leading to growing interest in new thermoelectric inorganic materials, such as the chalcogenides. The recently synthesized quaternary chalcogenide, Tl2PbXY4 (X = Zr, Hf and Y = S, Se), compounds were investigated using the full potential linear augmented plane wave method based on density functional theory. We used the generalized gradient approximation plus the optimized effective Hubbard parameter U to treat the exchange correlation. The existence of heavy metals (Tl, Pb and Hf) required the application of relativistic spin-orbit coupling via a second variational procedure. Tl2PbHfS4, Tl2PbHfSe4, Tl2PbZrS4 and Tl2PbZrSe4 compounds were found to be semiconductors with indirect band gaps of 0.911, 0.659, 0.983 and 0.529 eV, respectively. The types of carriers and electrical transport properties of Tl2PbXY4 (X = Zr, Hf and Y = S, Se) are attributed to the Tl-d and S Se-s electronic states near the Fermi level. Optical properties were investigated via the calculation of dielectric function and reflectivity. Using Boltzmann theory, we compared the thermoelectric properties and we found that Tl2PbHfS4 could be a good candidate for thermoelectric devices.