Sb2Te3 and Bi2Te3 based thermopower wave sources

Sumeet Walia; Rodney Weber; Sharath Sriram; Madhu Bhaskaran; Kay Latham; Serge Zhuiykov; Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh

doi:10.1039/C1EE01370J

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Sb₂Te₃ and Bi₂Te₃ based thermopower wave sources†

Sumeet Walia,*^a Rodney Weber,^b Sharath Sriram,^a Madhu Bhaskaran,^a Kay Latham,^c Serge Zhuiykov^d and Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh^a

Author affiliations

* Corresponding authors

^a RMIT University, School of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Melbourne, Australia
E-mail: sumeet.walia@rmit.edu.au
Fax: +613 9925 2007
Tel: +613 99253254

^b University of New South Wales at Australian Defence Force Academy, School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences, Canberra, Australia

^c RMIT University, School of Applied Sciences, Applied Chemistry, Melbourne, Australia

^d Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Material Science and Engineering Division, Melbourne, Australia

Abstract

Exothermic chemical reactions from nitrocellulose are coupled onto Sb₂Te₃ (antimony telluride) and Bi₂Te₃ (bismuth telluride) layers to generate self-propagating oscillating thermopower waves. P-type Sb₂Te₃ and N-type Bi₂Te₃ are employed due to their large Seebeck coefficients, high electrical conductivities and their complementary semiconducting properties. Sources based on both materials exhibit high power to mass ratios: up to 0.6 kW kg⁻¹ for Sb₂Te₃ and 1.0 kW kg⁻¹ for Bi₂Te₃. Having both P- and N-type semiconductors in the system, the combination of the outputs can be used for generating sources with polarities alternating in time.

This article is part of the themed collection: Thermoelectrics

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Article information

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/C1EE01370J
Article type: Paper
Submitted: 29 Mar 2011
Accepted: 09 Jun 2011
First published: 26 Jul 2011

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Energy Environ. Sci., 2011,4, 3558-3564

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Sb₂Te₃ and Bi₂Te₃ based thermopower wave sources

S. Walia, R. Weber, S. Sriram, M. Bhaskaran, K. Latham, S. Zhuiykov and K. Kalantar-zadeh, Energy Environ. Sci., 2011, 4, 3558 DOI: 10.1039/C1EE01370J

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Energy & Environmental Science