Enhanced thermoelectric performance of solution-derived bismuth telluride based nanocomposites via liquid-phase sintering
Zhang, Chaohua (Nanyang Technological University. Division of Physics and Applied Physics)
De La Mata, Maria (Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia)
Li, Zhong (Nanyang Technological University. School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering)
Belarre Triviño, Francisco Javier (Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia)
Arbiol i Cobos, Jordi (Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia)
Khor, Khiam Aik (Nanyang Technological University. School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering)
Poletti, Dario (Singapore University of Technology and Design)
Zhu, Beibei (Nanyang Technological University. School of Materials Science and Engineering)
Yan, Qingyu (Nanyang Technological University. School of Materials Science and Engineering)
Xiong, Qihua (Nanyang Technological University. Division of Physics and Applied Physics)

Date:	2016
Abstract:	Bismuth telluride based thermoelectric materials show great promise in electricity generation from waste heat and solid-state refrigeration, but improving their conversion efficiency with economical approaches for widespread use remains a challenge. An economical facile bottom-up approach has been developed to obtain nanostructured powders, which are used to build bulk thermoelectric materials. Using excess tellurium as sacrificial additive to enable liquid-phase sintering in the spark plasma sintering process, the lattice and bipolar contributions to the thermal conductivity are both greatly reduced without compromising too much the power factor, which leads to the achievement of high figure of merit (ZT) in both n-type and p-type bismuth telluride based nanocomposites. The ZT values are 1. 59±0. 16 for p-type Bi0. 5Sb1. 5Te3 and 0. 98±0. 07 for n-type Bi2Te2. 7Se0. 3 at 370 K, which are significantly high for bottom-up approaches. These results demonstrate that solution-chemistry approaches as facile, scalable and low-energy-intensive ways to achieve nanopowders, combined with liquid-phase sintering process, can open up great possibilities in developing high-performance low-price thermoelectric bulk nanocomposites.
Grants:	Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2014/SGR-1638 Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MAT2014-59961-C2-2-R Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad SEV-2013-0295
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, i la comunicació pública de l'obra, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials, i sempre que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original. No es permet la creació d'obres derivades.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió sotmesa a revisió
Subject:	Bismuth telluride ; Bottom-up ; Liquid-phase sintering ; Nanocomposites ; Thermoelectric materials
Published in:	Nano Energy, Vol. 30 (Dec. 2016) , p. 630-638, ISSN 2211-2855

DOI: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2016.10.056

Preprint 25 p, 2.0 MB

The record appears in these collections:
Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Experimental sciences > Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2)
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles