  Chemical doping is one of the most important strategies for tuning electrical
properties of semiconductors, particularly thermoelectric materials. Generally,
the main role of chemical doping lies in optimizing the carrier concentration,
but there can potentially be other important effects. Here, we show that
chemical doping plays multiple roles for both electron and phonon transport
properties in half-Heusler thermoelectric materials. With ZrNiSn-based
half-Heusler materials as an example, we use high-quality single and
polycrystalline crystals, various probes, including electrical transport
measurements, inelastic neutron scattering measurement, and first-principles
calculations, to investigate the underlying electron-phonon interaction. We
find that chemical doping brings strong screening effects to ionized
impurities, grain boundary, and polar optical phonon scattering, but has
negligible influence on lattice thermal conductivity. Furthermore, it is
possible to establish a carrier scattering phase diagram, which can be used to
select reasonable strategies for optimization of the thermoelectric
performance.
