Issue 113, 2016, Issue in Progress

Inhibition of minority transport for elevating the thermoelectric figure of merit of CuO/BiSbTe nanocomposites at high temperatures

Abstract

Achieving a large thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT) value at elevated temperatures for Bi2Te3-based materials is significant for low-grade waste-heat (∼400–500 K) recovery applications. Here, we show that in Bi0.4Sb1.6Te3 based composites incorporated with 0.2 vol% CuO nanoinclusions, the introduced asymmetric interface potentials can effectively inhibit the transport of minorities through stronger scattering than majorities, as well as the energy filtering effect, thus resulting in an obvious increase (∼8% rise) of power factor at high temperatures. In addition to enhanced phonon scattering at interfaces and nanoinclusions, the reduced thermal conductivity (∼65% decline) at elevated temperatures can be attributed to inhibition of bipolar contributions through strong scattering of minorities at the interface potentials. Consequently, in BiSbTe-based thermoelectric systems with 0.2 vol% CuO, a largest ZT = 1.37 is achieved at 496 K, which is ∼40% larger than that of the BiSbTe matrix at the same temperature.

Graphical abstract: Inhibition of minority transport for elevating the thermoelectric figure of merit of CuO/BiSbTe nanocomposites at high temperatures

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
28 Sep 2016
Accepted
21 Nov 2016
First published
22 Nov 2016

RSC Adv., 2016,6, 112050-112056

Inhibition of minority transport for elevating the thermoelectric figure of merit of CuO/BiSbTe nanocomposites at high temperatures

Y. Li, G. Liu, X. Qin and F. Shan, RSC Adv., 2016, 6, 112050 DOI: 10.1039/C6RA24107G

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