TY - JOUR AB - High carrier mobility is critical to improving thermoelectric performance over a broad temperature range. However, traditional doping inevitably deteriorates carrier mobility. Herein, we develop a strategy for fine tuning of defects to improve carrier mobility. To begin, n-type PbTe is created by compensating for the intrinsic Pb vacancy in bare PbTe. Excess Pb2+ reduces vacancy scattering, resulting in a high carrier mobility of ∼3400 cm2 V–1 s–1. Then, excess Ag is introduced to compensate for the remaining intrinsic Pb vacancies. We find that excess Ag exhibits a dynamic doping process with increasing temperatures, increasing both the carrier concentration and carrier mobility throughout a wide temperature range; specifically, an ultrahigh carrier mobility ∼7300 cm2 V–1 s–1 is obtained for Pb1.01Te + 0.002Ag at 300 K. Moreover, the dynamic doping-induced high carrier concentration suppresses the bipolar thermal conductivity at high temperatures. The final step is using iodine to optimize the carrier concentration to ∼1019 cm–3. Ultimately, a maximum ZT value of ∼1.5 and a large average ZTave value of ∼1.0 at 300–773 K are obtained for Pb1.01Te0.998I0.002 + 0.002Ag. These findings demonstrate that fine tuning of defects with <0.5% impurities can remarkably enhance carrier mobility and improve thermoelectric performance. AU - Wang, Siqi AU - Chang, Cheng AU - Bai, Shulin AU - Qin, Bingchao AU - Zhu, Yingcai AU - Zhan, Shaoping AU - Zheng, Junqing AU - Tang, Shuwei AU - Zhao, Li Dong ID - 12331 IS - 2 JF - Chemistry of Materials SN - 0897-4756 TI - Fine tuning of defects enables high carrier mobility and enhanced thermoelectric performance of n-type PbTe VL - 35 ER -