Bi2Te3 nanoflowers assembled of defective nanosheets with enhanced thermoelectric performance

• The thermoelectric properties of the thermoelectric material have recently been extensively studied for revealing the intrinsic properties of Dirac electrons and elucidating effects of defects on its unique electronic structures (Nano Lett. 2013, 13, 3269–3273).
• Furthermore, hierarchically architectures with designed morphologies can result in enhancements in ZT because of both a high density of states and an increased phonon scattering (ACS NANO, 2010, 4, 2523-2530).
• We first report a novel one-step synthesis strategy based on solvothermal routes to get Bi2Te3 hierarchically nanoflowers with defects and demonstrate how local structural defects can profoundly change the thermoelectric power.

Bi2Te3 assembled by disordered nanosheets with defects was prepared using a one-step easy synthesis strategy based on easy solvothermal synthesis routes. The high compatibile plane structure, minimization of nucleation and interfacial angle energies are the driving force of the crystal connection and the formation of the defects. To survey the impact of the defects on their thermoelectric properties, thermoelectric properties of bulk pellets have been investigated, and they exhibited preferable thermoelectric properties with a high ZT value of 0.68 due to its unique structural characteristics.

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