Performance of Skutterudite-Based Modules

Due to their excellent thermoelectric (TE) performance, skutterudite materials have been selected by many laboratories and companies for development of TE modules to recover power from waste heat at high temperatures (300°C to 600°C). After years of effort, we have developed reliable n- and p-type skutterudite materials showing maximum figure of merit (ZT) of 1.0 at 550°C and 0.75 at 450°C, respectively. In this work, we systematically investigated the performance of a module made using these two kinds of skutterudite. We demonstrate ∼7.2% conversion efficiency for temperature of 600°C at the hot side of the module and 50°C at the cold side, and show that the module had excellent stability in the high-temperature environment. Further improving the TE performance of our skutterudites, the conversion efficiency reached ∼8.5% under the same condition.

[1]  Hsin Wang,et al.  Determination of Thermoelectric Module Efficiency: A Survey , 2014, Journal of Electronic Materials.

[2]  Takahiro Ochi,et al.  Development of Skutterudite Thermoelectric Materials and Modules , 2012, Journal of Electronic Materials.

[3]  Thierry Caillat,et al.  Thermoelectric Materials for Space and Automotive Power Generation , 2006 .

[4]  T. Ochi,et al.  Stability of Skutterudite Thermoelectric Materials , 2014, Journal of Electronic Materials.

[5]  G. J. Snyder,et al.  Complex thermoelectric materials. , 2008, Nature materials.

[6]  George S. Nolas,et al.  SKUTTERUDITES : A phonon-glass-electron crystal approach to advanced thermoelectric energy conversion applications , 1999 .

[7]  Kuei-Fang Hsu,et al.  Nanostructuring, compositional fluctuations, and atomic ordering in the thermoelectric materials AgPb(m)SbTe(2+m). The myth of solid solutions. , 2005, Journal of the American Chemical Society.

[8]  Miaofang Chi,et al.  Multiple-filled skutterudites: high thermoelectric figure of merit through separately optimizing electrical and thermal transports. , 2011, Journal of the American Chemical Society.

[9]  Terry Hendricks,et al.  Electrical, Thermal, and Mechanical Characterization of Novel Segmented-Leg Thermoelectric Modules , 2011 .

[10]  R. K. Williams,et al.  Filled Skutterudite Antimonides: A New Class of Thermoelectric Materials , 1996, Science.

[11]  George S. Nolas,et al.  High figure of merit in partially filled ytterbium skutterudite materials , 2000 .

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

[13]  Lidong Chen,et al.  Fabrication of a CoSb3-based thermoelectric module , 2010 .

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

[15]  Lihua Wu,et al.  On Intensifying Carrier Impurity Scattering to Enhance Thermoelectric Performance in Cr‐Doped CeyCo4Sb12 , 2015 .

[16]  C. Uher,et al.  Low thermal conductivity and high thermoelectric figure of merit in n-type BaxYbyCo4Sb12 double-filled skutterudites , 2008 .

[17]  D. Rowe.  Thermoelectrics Handbook , 2005 .

[18]  Ryan Maloney,et al.  Conversion efficiency of skutterudite-based thermoelectric modules. , 2014, Physical chemistry chemical physics : PCCP.