Issue 39, 2020

Nanostructured monoclinic Cu2Se as a near-room-temperature thermoelectric material

Abstract

Searching for new-type, eco-friendly, and Earth-abundant thermoelectric materials, which can be used as an alternative to the high-cost bismuth telluride, is important for near-room-temperature applications. In this work, nanostructured monoclinic Cu2Se with a low carrier concentration has been synthesized by a wet mechanical alloying process combined with spark plasma sintering. Such a low carrier concentration, which originates from the effectively suppressed Cu deficiencies during the fabrication process, induces a relatively low electrical conductivity and carrier thermal conductivity. Besides, the nanostructured grains combined with point defects and phonon resonance enhance the phonon scattering to induce a low lattice thermal conductivity without sacrificing the electrical transport properties. As a result, our nanostructured monoclinic Cu2Se obtains a figure of merit of 0.72 at 380 K with good thermal stability. This work indicates that nanostructured monoclinic Cu2Se is a promising near-room-temperature thermoelectric material.

Graphical abstract: Nanostructured monoclinic Cu2Se as a near-room-temperature thermoelectric material

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
07 août 2020
Accepted
10 sept. 2020
First published
11 sept. 2020

Nanoscale, 2020,12, 20536-20542

Nanostructured monoclinic Cu2Se as a near-room-temperature thermoelectric material

J. Chen, T. Liu, D. Bao, B. Zhang, G. Han, C. Liu, J. Tang, D. Zhou, L. Yang and Z. Chen, Nanoscale, 2020, 12, 20536 DOI: 10.1039/D0NR05829G

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