Texture anisotropy of higher manganese silicide following arc-melting and hot-pressing

•Higher manganese silicide was produced using arc-melting and hot-pressing.•The samples showed 10% texture with the c-axis aligned with the pressing direction.•It was shown that ignoring the texture a 25% error in the ZT measurements can arise.•The texture was shown to fit a model based on the general effective media approach.

In this research it is shown that thermoelectric higher manganese silicides (HMS) compounds produced by arc-melting followed by hot pressing exhibited textured behavior, due to the different number of Mn–Si bonds on the [00l] direction over the [hk0] direction, leading to ∼10% ZT enhancement in parallel to the pressing direction compared to the transverse direction. This shows that more carful considerations are required while assuming isotropic behavior in non-cubic polycrystalline thermoelectric materials.