Enhanced performances of melt spun Bi2(Te,Se)3 for n-type thermoelectric legs

► In this paper, a rapid and cost-effective melt spinning subsequently combined with spark plasma sintering process (MS-SPS) was utilized to prepare high performances n-type Bi2(Te,Se)3-based materials. ► The material with 20% selenium shows a maximum ZT of 1.05 and an improved average ZT of 0.97 between 300 K and 500 K which are largely enhanced compared traditional commercialized zone melted ingot (ZM). ► Moreover, we present a feasible approach to reduce the usage of scare element tellurium in thermoelectricity by a selenium substitution. ► We also fabricated and measured the thermoelectric conversion efficiencies of two thermoelectric modules to confirm the thermoelectric performances of the MS-SPS sample.