Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
5458796 | Journal of Alloys and Compounds | 2017 | 16 Pages |
Abstract
It is challenging to improve the thermoelectric figure-of-merit as its constituent terms such as Seebeck coefficient, electrical conductivity, and thermal conductivity, are inter-related in the way that the enhancement of one term leads to the degradation of others. Therefore, it is highly desirable to design a new synthesis process that allows us to independently control these terms. Here, we report a simple, two-step process combining spark plasma sintering (SPS) and post-annealing (PA) to separately control the carrier density and mobility in the p-type (Bi0.2Sb0.8)2Te3. High-temperature SPS enables enhancing the carrier mobility by reducing scattering sites such as grain boundaries. Then, the following PA at a lower temperature allows tailoring the carrier density without the degradation of mobility. Beyond bismuth telluride-based, room-temperature thermoelectric materials, we believe that our result will provide an insight for the performance enhancement of other thermoelectric materials such as oxide and skutterudite.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Materials Science
Metals and Alloys
Authors
Sang-Soon Lim, Byung Kyu Kim, Seong Keun Kim, Hyung-Ho Park, Dong-Ik Kim, Dow-Bin Hyun, Jin-Sang Kim, Seung-Hyub Baek,