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High thermoelectric performance of Bi1−x K x CuSeO prepared by combustion synthesis

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Abstract

A series of K-doped Bi1−x K x CuSeO (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.10) compounds were prepared by combustion synthesis combined with spark plasma sintering method. Phase composition and microstructure analysis indicate almost single BiCuSeO phase in low doping level, while phase separation appears in heavy doping level. The thermoelectric properties of the Bi1−x K x CuSeO compounds have been measured in the temperature range of 323–823 K. The electrical conductivity is greatly enhanced by almost three times from 8.70 to 26.2 S/cm at 323 K by the substitution of Bi with K due to the large decrease of the activation energy. The overall thermal conductivity decreases significantly due to the strong point defect scattering by K doping and possibly enhanced interface scattering on the secondary phase. The maximum ZT reaches 0.6 at 823 K for the sample of x = 0.02, which is about 50% higher than that of the pristine sample. Our work offers a fast and more efficient approach for the fabrication of BiCuSeO-based materials.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by NSF of China (51402010 and 51672155) and Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No. BK20140270).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Organic-Inorganic Composites, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, 100029, People’s Republic of China

    Jin-Le Lan, Wenqiang Ma, Chengjie Deng & Xiaoping Yang

  2. Changzhou Institute of Advanced Materials, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, 100029, People’s Republic of China

    Jin-Le Lan

  3. State Key Laboratory of New Ceramics and Fine Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, People’s Republic of China

    Guang-Kun Ren & Yuan-Hua Lin

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  1. Jin-Le Lan
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  2. Wenqiang Ma
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Correspondence to Jin-Le Lan or Yuan-Hua Lin.

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Lan, JL., Ma, W., Deng, C. et al. High thermoelectric performance of Bi1−x K x CuSeO prepared by combustion synthesis. J Mater Sci 52, 11569–11579 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-017-1323-z

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