Origin of inhomogeneity in spark plasma sintered bismuth antimony telluride thermoelectric nanocomposites

Enzheng Shi; Shuang Cui; Nicholas Kempf; Qingfeng Xing; Thomas Chasapis; Huazhang Zhu; Zhe Li; Je-Hyeong Bahk; Jeffrey G. Snyder; Yanliang Zhang; Renkun Chen; Yue Wu

doi:10.1007/s12274-019-2590-6

Nano Research 2020, 13(5): 1339-1346 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-019-2590-6

Research Article | Issue | Published: 18 December 2019

Origin of inhomogeneity in spark plasma sintered bismuth antimony telluride thermoelectric nanocomposites

Show Author's Information Hide Author's Information Enzheng Shi^{¹^,²^,^§}, Shuang Cui^{³^,⁴^,^§}, Nicholas Kempf^⁵, Qingfeng Xing^², Thomas Chasapis^⁶, Huazhang Zhu^¹, Zhe Li^¹, Je-Hyeong Bahk^⁷, Jeffrey G. Snyder^⁶, Yanliang Zhang^⁵, Renkun Chen^³, Yue Wu^{¹^,²}(

)

1Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA

2Ames Laboratory, Department of Energy, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA

3Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California-San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA

4Buildings and Thermal Sciences Center, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO 80401, USA

5Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA

6Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA

7Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA

^§Enzheng Shi and Shuang Cui contributed equally to this work.

Keywords:

thermoelectrics, solution synthesis, bismuth antimony telluride, inhomogeneity

Topics:

Antimony compounds Energy dispersive spectroscopy Nanocomposites Tellurium compounds

Cite this article:

Shi E, Cui S, Kempf N, et al. Origin of inhomogeneity in spark plasma sintered bismuth antimony telluride thermoelectric nanocomposites. Nano Research, 2020, 13(5): 1339-1346. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-019-2590-6

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Abstract Electronic supplementary material About this article

Abstract

Anisotropy and inhomogeneity are ubiquitous in spark plasma sintered thermoelectric devices. However, the origin of inhomogeneity in thermoelectric nanocomposites has rarely been investigated so far. Herein, we systematically study the impact of inhomogeneity in spark plasma sintered bismuth antimony telluride (BiSbTe) thermoelectric nanocomposites fabricated from solution-synthesized nanoplates. The figure of merit can reach 1.18, which, however, can be overestimated to 1.88 without considering the inhomogeneity. Our study reveals that the inhomogeneity in thermoelectric properties is attributed to the non-uniformity of porosity, textures and elemental distribution from electron backscatter diffraction and energy-dispersive spectroscopy characterizations. This finding suggests that the optimization of bulk material homogeneity should also be actively pursued in any future thermoelectric material research.

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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 21 August 2019

Revised: 19 November 2019

Accepted: 01 December 2019

Published: 18 December 2019

Issue date: May 2020

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Acknowledgements

R. K. C. acknowledges grant # NSF(DMR-1508420). Y. W. thanks the support from the Herbert L. Stiles Professorship and ACRI Center Initiative from Iowa State University.