Impact Factor:

16.6

DOI number:

10.1021/jacs.6b07010

Journal:

Journal of the American Chemical Society

Key Words:

Crystal structure; Electrical conductivity; Materials; Thermal conductivity; Thermoelectric materials

Abstract:

Solid-state thermoelectric technology, interconverting heat to electrical energy, offers a promising solution for relaxing global energy problems. A high dimensionless figure of merit ZT is desirable for high-efficiency thermoelectric power generation. To date, thermoelectric materials research has focused on increasing the material’s ZT. Here we first fabricated phase-separated Sn1–xPbxSe materials by hydrothermal synthesis. We demonstrate that the simultaneous optimization of the power factor and significant reduction in thermal conductivity can be achieved in the phase-separated Sn1–xPbxSe material. The introduction of the PbSe phase contributes to improvement of the electrical conductivity and power factor of the SnSe phase. Meanwhile, nanoscale precipitates and mesoscale grains define all-scale hierarchical architectures to scattering phonons, leading to low lattice thermal conductivity. These two favorable factors lead to remarkably high thermoelectric performance with ZT ∼ 1.7 at 873 K in polycrystalline SnSe + 1% PbSe along the pressing direction, which is a record-high ZT for SnSe polycrystals. These findings highlight the prospects of realizing highly effective solid-state thermoelectric devices.

Co-author:

Wei Wei, Yusheng Li, Xiang Wang, Guizhou Xu, Cheng Chang, Zhihe Wang, Youwei Du

First Author:

Guodong Tang

Indexed by:

Journal paper

Correspondence Author:

Guodong Tang,Jian Zhang, Li-Dong Zhao

Discipline:

Engineering

Document Type:

J

Volume:

138

Issue:

41

Page Number:

13647-13654

Translation or Not:

no

Date of Publication:

2016-10-19

Included Journals:

SCI

Links to published journals:

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jacs.6b07010