Effect of onsite Coulomb repulsion on thermoelectric properties of full-Heusler compounds with pseudogaps

Electronic structure calculations using local density and generalized gradient (LDA/GGA) approximations for the full Heusler compound Fe₂VAl show that it is a pseudogap (negative gap) system with very small density of states (DOS) at the Fermi level but rapidly rising DOS away from it, a feature that makes this compound a promising thermoelectric material. Thermopower (S) measurements in nominally pure and n-doped Fe₂VAl give indeed large values of S (~{-}$150 ${μ}$V/K at 200 K). To improve on the inadequacy of LDA/GGA in handling $d$-electron systems and to understand the origin of large thermopowers measured, we have carried out electronic structure calculations using the $GGA+U$ method with several values of the on-site Coulomb interaction parameter $U$, including the ones calculated using constrained density functional theory. For the latter, we found Fe${}₂$VAl to be a narrow band-gap semiconductor with a gap of 0.55 eV. With the calculated band structures, we have studied the carrier concentration and temperature dependence of $S$ using Boltzmann transport equation in constant relaxation time approximation for both the pseudogap and the gapped cases. Comparison between theory and experiment suggests that neither the pseudogap nor the finite gap (0.55 eV) model can explain all the transport properties consistently. Therefore, treatment of U beyond simple mean-field approach (done in GGA+U) and/or inclusion of defect-induced changes in the host electronic structure might be important in understanding the experiments.