Dimensionality Mismatch Enables Decoupled Heat and Charge Transport

Decoupling heat and charge transport is a key challenge in thermoelectrics. Here, we identify a route to spatially separate phonon and carrier transport in quasi-one-dimensional materials through high-throughput screening of the Materials Project database. Representative Sn${}_2$S${}_3$ and SbTeI exhibit a strong-intrachain–weak-interchain bonding hierarchy that favors phonon propagation along the chains while suppressing transverse lattice heat transport. In contrast, transverse valence-band states provide effective interchain electronic coupling and relatively light hole transport. This mismatch between lattice and electronic transport dimensionalities produces an inverted thermal–electrical anisotropy. Across the screened candidates, interchain lattice thermal conductivity is strongly suppressed, whereas hole transport remains weakly anisotropic or even favors the interchain direction. For SbTeI, this decoupling yields a maximum $zT$ of approximately 2.1 near 900~K. These results establish dimensionality mismatch as a general strategy for decoupling phonon and carrier transport in thermoelectric materials.