The thermoelectric properties of three-dimensional topological Anderson insulators with line dislocations were studied. It was shown that, at high densities of dislocations, the thermoelectric figure of merit ZT could be dominated by one-dimensional topologically protected conducting states channelled through the lattice screw dislocations in the topological insulator materials with a nonzero time-reversal-invariant momentum such as Bi0.9Sb0.1. When the chemical potential did not exceed much the mobility edge the ZT at room temperatures could reach large values, much higher than unity for reasonable parameters, hence making this system a strong candidate for applications in heat management of nanodevices.

Large Thermoelectric Figure of Merit for Three-Dimensional Topological Anderson Insulators via Line Dislocation Engineering. O.A.Tretiakov, A.Abanov, S.Murakami, J.Sinova: Applied Physics Letters, 2010, 97[7], 073108