Home > Articles > Published articles > Tuning transport properties in thermoelectric nanocomposites through inorganic ligands and heterostructured building blocks |
Date: | 2019 |
Abstract: | Methodologies that involve the use of nanoparticles as "artificial atoms" to rationally build materials in a bottom-up fashion are particularly well-suited to control the matter at the nanoscale. Colloidal synthetic routes allow for an exquisite control over such "artificial atoms" in terms of size, shape, and crystal phase as well as core and surface compositions. We present here a bottom-up approach to produce Pb-Ag-K-S-Te nanocomposites, which is a highly promising system for thermoelectric energy conversion. First, we developed a high-yield and scalable colloidal synthesis route to uniform lead sulfide (PbS) nanorods, whose tips are made of silver sulfide (AgS). We then took advantage of the large surface-to-volume ratio to introduce a p-type dopant (K) by replacing native organic ligands with KTe. Upon thermal consolidation, KTe-surface modified PbS-AgS nanorods yield p-type doped nanocomposites with PbTe and PbS as major phases and AgS and AgTe as embedded nanoinclusions. Thermoelectric characterization of such consolidated nanosolids showed a high thermoelectric figure-of-merit of 1 at 620 K. |
Grants: | European Commission 754411 Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2014/SGR-1638 European Commission 306733 Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2017/SGR-327 Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad ENE2017-85087-C3 Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad SEV-2017-0706 |
Note: | This is an open access article published under an ACS AuthorChoice License. See Standard ACS AuthorChoice/Editors' Choice Usage Agreement - https://pubs.acs.org/page/policy/authorchoice_termsofuse.html |
Rights: | Tots els drets reservats. |
Language: | Anglès |
Document: | Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada |
Subject: | Colloidal nanoparticles ; Asymmetric nanoparticles ; Inorganic ligands ; Heterostructures ; Catalyst assisted growth ; Nanocomposites ; Thermoelectrics |
Published in: | ACS nano, Vol. 13, Issue 6 (June 2019) , p. 6572-6580, ISSN 1936-086X |
9 p, 8.2 MB |