Spark plasma sintered bismuth telluride-based thermoelectric materials incorporating dispersed boron carbide

• Nano-B4C reinforced Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 p-type thermoelectric produced by SPS.
• Addition of B4C up to 0.2 vol% to SPS’d material has little effect on zT.
• Vickers hardness improved by 27% by adding 0.2 vol% B4C.
• Fracture toughness of SPS material: KIC = 0.80 MPa m1/2 by SEVNB.
• Mechanical properties much better than commercial directionally solidified material.

The mechanical properties of bismuth telluride based thermoelectric materials have received much less attention in the literature than their thermoelectric properties. Polycrystalline p-type Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 materials were produced from powder using spark plasma sintering (SPS). The effects of nano-B4C addition on the thermoelectric performance, Vickers hardness and fracture toughness were measured. Addition of 0.2 vol% B4C was found to have little effect on zT but increased hardness by approximately 27% when compared to polycrystalline material without B4C. The KIC fracture toughness of these compositions was measured as 0.80 MPa m1/2 by Single-Edge V-Notched Beam (SEVNB). The machinability of polycrystalline materials produced by SPS was significantly better than commercially available directionally solidified materials because the latter is limited by cleavage along the crystallographic plane parallel to the direction of solidification.

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