Synthesis and growth mechanism of rough PbTe polycrystalline thermoelectric nanorods

Rough PbTe polycrystalline one-dimensional nanostructure is expected to exhibit improved thermoelectric properties, compared to single-crystal one. In this article, polycrystalline PbTe thermoelectric nanorods with rough surfaces are successfully synthesized with or without surfactants by a simple alkaline reducing chemical route. Microstructural analyses show that these nanorods range from 50 to 200 nm in diameter with lengths up to 1 μm, and are composed of PbTe nanoparticles of about 30–50 nm. The formation mechanism of PbTe nanorods can be reasonably explained by tellurium template-based process from the time-dependent experiments.