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Chalcostibite (CuSbS2) is composed of earth-abundant elements and has a proper band gap (Eg = 1.05 eV) as a thermoelectric (TE) material. Herein, we report the TE properties in the CuSbS2 based composites with a mole ratio of (1-x)CuSbS2-xCu1.8S (x = 0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3), which were prepared by mechanical alloying (MA) combined with spark plasma sintering (SPS). X-ray diffraction (XRD) and back-scattered electron image (BSE) results indicate that a single phase of CuSbS2 is synthesized at x = 0 and the samples consist of CuSbS2, Cu3SbS4, and Cu12Sb4S13 at 0.1 ≤ x ≤ 0.3. The correlation between the phase structure, microstructure, and TE transport properties of the bulk samples is established. The electrical conductivity increases from 0.14 to 50.66 S·cm-1 at 723 K and at 0 ≤ x ≤ 0.03, while the Seebeck coefficient holds an appropriate value of 190.51 μV·K-1. The highest ZT value of 0.17 is obtained at 723 K and at x = 0.3 owing to the combination of a high PF 183 μW·m-1·K-2 and a low κ 0.8 W·m-1·K-1.


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Preparation and thermoelectric properties of Cu1.8S/CuSbS2 composites

Show Author's information Chunmei TANGDoudou LIANGHezhang LIKun LUOBoping ZHANG( )
Beijing Municipal Key Laboratory of New Energy Materials and Technologies, School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China

Abstract

Chalcostibite (CuSbS2) is composed of earth-abundant elements and has a proper band gap (Eg = 1.05 eV) as a thermoelectric (TE) material. Herein, we report the TE properties in the CuSbS2 based composites with a mole ratio of (1-x)CuSbS2-xCu1.8S (x = 0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3), which were prepared by mechanical alloying (MA) combined with spark plasma sintering (SPS). X-ray diffraction (XRD) and back-scattered electron image (BSE) results indicate that a single phase of CuSbS2 is synthesized at x = 0 and the samples consist of CuSbS2, Cu3SbS4, and Cu12Sb4S13 at 0.1 ≤ x ≤ 0.3. The correlation between the phase structure, microstructure, and TE transport properties of the bulk samples is established. The electrical conductivity increases from 0.14 to 50.66 S·cm-1 at 723 K and at 0 ≤ x ≤ 0.03, while the Seebeck coefficient holds an appropriate value of 190.51 μV·K-1. The highest ZT value of 0.17 is obtained at 723 K and at x = 0.3 owing to the combination of a high PF 183 μW·m-1·K-2 and a low κ 0.8 W·m-1·K-1.

Keywords: phase structure, CuSbS2, ZT, thermoelectric

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DOI
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Publication history
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Publication history

Received: 06 July 2018
Revised: 27 September 2018
Accepted: 21 November 2018
Published: 13 June 2019
Issue date: June 2019

Copyright

© The author(s) 2019

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2018YFB0703600) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11474176).

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