Symmetry lowering through surface engineering and improved thermoelectric properties in Janus MXenes.

Despite ample evidence of their influence on the transport properties of two-dimensional solids, the interrelations of reduced symmetry, electronic and thermal transport have rarely been discussed in the context of thermoelectric materials. With the motivation to design new thermoelectric materials with improved properties, we have addressed these by performing first-principles density functional theory based calculations in conjunction with semi-classical Boltzmann transport theory on a number of compounds in the MXene family. The symmetry lowering in parent M