Near Cancellation of Electron-Phonon Corrections in Thermoelectric Effects in Alloys

Abstract

The corrections to the low-temperature Seebeck coefficient of dilute alloys caused by the electron-phonon renormalization of the impurity scattering vertex are found to cancel completely those other corrections due to the electron-phonon renormalization of the electron energy, velocity, and relaxation time in a model of weak $s$-wave scatterers, Debye phonons, and free electrons in the limit of large valence. For normal valences the electron-phonon corrections are reduced by a partial cancellation to a few percent of some recently predicted values.