Scaling behaviour of the thermopower in a two-component composite near a percolation threshold

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Abstract
An exact relation between the bulk effective Seebeck coefficient alpha e of a composite conductor and the bulk effective electrical and thermal conductivities sigma e and gamma e is used to study the scaling behaviour of alpha e near percolation. The behaviour turns out to be quite rich, as a result of its dependence on three dimensionless small parameters, namely, the electrical and thermal conductivity ratios of the two components sigma I/ sigma M, gamma I/ gamma M, and the distance away from the percolation threshold Delta p identical to pM-pc. The behaviour of the thermoelectric figure of merit Ze in the different parts of the critical region is also discussed.