In situ precipitation of Te nanoparticles in p-type BiSbTe and the effect on thermoelectric performance.

Through zone melting method, a certain amount of Te nano precipitations were in situ generated in the p-type BiSbTe matrix because of the addition of graphene. Both the microstructure and thermoelectric performance were investigated. Increased carrier concentration was obtained to improve the electrical performance, and the lattice thermal conductivity was simultaneously lowered about 25% by Te nano precipitations as phonon scattering centers. Consequently, an optimization of the thermoelectric figure-of-merit ZT between 375 and 550 K was achieved.

[1]  M. Kanatzidis,et al.  High-performance bulk thermoelectrics with all-scale hierarchical architectures , 2012, Nature.

[2]  Terry M. Tritt,et al.  Thermoelectric Phenomena, Materials, and Applications , 2011 .

[3]  Heng Wang,et al.  Convergence of electronic bands for high performance bulk thermoelectrics , 2011, Nature.

[4]  Wei Li,et al.  Enhanced thermoelectric performance in p-type BiSbTe bulk alloy with nanoinclusion of ZnAlO , 2011 .

[5]  R. Opila,et al.  Promising thermoelectric properties of commercial PEDOT:PSS materials and their bi2Te3 powder composites. , 2010, ACS applied materials & interfaces.

[6]  M. Kanatzidis,et al.  In situ nanostructure generation and evolution within a bulk thermoelectric material to reduce lattice thermal conductivity. , 2010, Nano letters.

[7]  Q. Fu,et al.  Progress in graphene chemistry , 2009, IEEE Computer Society Computational Systems Bioinformatics Conference.

[8]  Xiangyang Huang,et al.  Effects of nano-TiO2 dispersion on the thermoelectric properties offilled-skutterudite Ba0.22Co4Sb12 , 2009 .

[9]  Qingjie Zhang,et al.  Unique nanostructures and enhanced thermoelectric performance of melt-spun BiSbTe alloys , 2009 .

[10]  L. Bell.  Cooling, Heating, Generating Power, and Recovering Waste Heat with Thermoelectric Systems , 2008, Science.

[11]  Gang Chen,et al.  Enhanced thermoelectric figure-of-merit in p-type nanostructured bismuth antimony tellurium alloys made from elemental chunks. , 2008, Nano letters.

[12]  Min Zhou,et al.  Thermoelectric and mechanical properties of nano-SiC-dispersed Bi2Te3 fabricated by mechanical alloying and spark plasma sintering , 2008 .

[13]  Tiejun Zhu,et al.  Syntheses and thermoelectric properties of Bi2Te3/Sb2Te3 bulk nanocomposites with laminated nanostructure , 2008 .

[14]  M. Dresselhaus,et al.  High-Thermoelectric Performance of Nanostructured Bismuth Antimony Telluride Bulk Alloys , 2008, Science.

[15]  Jian He,et al.  Thermoelectric and transport properties of n-type Bi2Te3 nanocomposites , 2008 .

[16]  C. N. Lau,et al.  Superior thermal conductivity of single-layer graphene. , 2008, Nano letters.

[17]  E. Toberer,et al.  Complex thermoelectric materials. , 2008, Nature materials.

[18]  Ctirad Uher,et al.  Spinodal decomposition and nucleation and growth as a means to bulk nanostructured thermoelectrics: enhanced performance in Pb(1-x)Sn(x)Te-PbS. , 2007, Journal of the American Chemical Society.

[19]  Andre K. Geim,et al.  The rise of graphene. , 2007, Nature materials.

[20]  Han Li,et al.  Preparation and thermoelectric transport properties of high-performance p-type Bi2Te3 with layered nanostructure , 2007 .

[21]  M. Kanatzidis,et al.  Cubic AgPbmSbTe2+m: Bulk Thermoelectric Materials with High Figure of Merit , 2004, Science.

[22]  R. Venkatasubramanian,et al.  Thin-film thermoelectric devices with high room-temperature figures of merit , 2001, Nature.

[23]  G. Vineyard,et al.  Semiconductor Thermoelements and Thermoelectric Cooling , 1957 .