Electronegative guests in CoSb3

Bo Duan; Jiong Yang; James R. Salvador; Yang He; Bo Zhao; Shanyu Wang; Ping Wei; Fumio S. Ohuchi; Wenqing Zhang; Raphaël P. Hermann; Olivier Gourdon; Scott X. Mao; Yingwen Cheng; Chongmin Wang; Jun Liu; Pengcheng Zhai; Xinfeng Tang; Qingjie Zhang; Jihui Yang

doi:10.1039/C6EE00322B

Electronegative guests in CoSb₃†

Bo Duan,‡^ab Jiong Yang,‡^ac James R. Salvador,^d Yang He,^e Bo Zhao,^a Shanyu Wang,^a Ping Wei,^ab Fumio S. Ohuchi,^a Wenqing Zhang,*^c Raphaël P. Hermann,^f Olivier Gourdon,^g Scott X. Mao,^e Yingwen Cheng,^h Chongmin Wang,ⁱ Jun Liu,^h Pengcheng Zhai,^b Xinfeng Tang,^b Qingjie Zhang*^b and Jihui Yang*^a

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* Corresponding authors

^a Materials Science and Engineering Department, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA
E-mail: jihuiy@uw.edu

^b State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China
E-mail: zhangqj@whut.edu.cn

^c Materials Genome Institute, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China
E-mail: wqzhang@mail.sic.ac.cn

^d Chemical and Materials Systems Lab, General Motors R&D Center, Warren, MI 48090, USA

^e Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA

^f Materials Science and Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA

^g Research and Development, ZS Pharma, Coppell, TX 75019, USA

^h Energy and Environment Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA 99352, USA

ⁱ Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA 99352, USA

Abstract

Introducing guests into a host framework to form a so called inclusion compound can be used to design materials with new and fascinating functionalities. The vast majority of inclusion compounds have electropositive guests with neutral or negatively charged frameworks. Here, we show a series of electronegative guest filled skutterudites with inverse polarity. The strong covalent guest–host interactions observed for the electronegative group VIA guests, i.e., S and Se, feature a unique localized “cluster vibration” which significantly influences the lattice dynamics, together with the point-defect scattering caused by element substitutions, resulting in very low lattice thermal conductivity values. The findings of electronegative guests provide a new perspective for guest-filling in skutterudites, and the covalent filler/lattice interactions lead to an unusual lattice dynamics phenomenon which can be used for designing high-efficiency thermoelectric materials and novel functional inclusion compounds with open structures.

Energy & Environmental Science

Electronegative guests in CoSb₃†

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Electronegative guests in CoSb₃

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