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Thermoelectric performance of SnTe alloys with In and Sb co-doped near critical solubility limit

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Abstract

Lead-free tin telluride (SnTe) has been viewed as one promising solid thermoelectric material for recovering waste heat in recent years. In this work, SnTe alloys doped with excessive In and Sb have been synthesized by melting, quenching and spark plasma sintering. The Seebeck coefficient has been enhanced by synergistic effect based on resonant levels and increased carrier effective mass especially at low and middle temperature range, and then, the power factor is enlarged. With the reduced electrical and lattice thermal conductivity via co-doping, the total thermal conductivity is decreased. Intrinsic point defect and more grain boundaries lead to reduction in the lattice thermal conductivity through the co-doping. In addition, as the doping level is near the solubility limit, the 200–600 nm, In-rich precipitations have been detected in Sn0.848Sb0.14In0.012Te alloy, which can further reduce the lattice thermal conductivity. Thus, the lowest lattice thermal conductivity of 0.96 W m−1 K−1 is obtained at 800 K. Finally, the maximum figure of merit zT of ~ 0.8 at 800 K has been obtained for Sn0.848Sb0.14In0.012Te alloy, and a relative high average zT of ~ 0.45 in 300–800 K is achieved due to the zT improvement in the low and middle temperature range which indicated that SnTe is a promising candidate for the thermoelectric application.

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Acknowledgements

The work is financially supported by the National Basic Research Program of China of 2013CB632506, the Natural Science Fund of China under Grant Nos. 51501105, 51672159, 51871134, 51611540342, the Young Scholars Program of Shandong University under Grant No. 2015WLJH21, the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation under Grant Nos. 2015M580588 and 2016T90631, the Postdoctoral Innovation Foundation of Shandong Province under Grant No. 201603027 and the Foundation of the State Key Laboratory of Metastable Materials Science and Technology under Grant No. 201703.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Physics, State Key Laboratory of Crystal Materials, Shandong University, Jinan, China

    Teng Wang, Hongchao Wang, Wenbin Su, Jinze Zhai, Xue Wang, Tingting Chen & Chunlei Wang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Metastable Materials Science and Technology, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, China

    Hongchao Wang

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  1. Teng Wang
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Wang, T., Wang, H., Su, W. et al. Thermoelectric performance of SnTe alloys with In and Sb co-doped near critical solubility limit. J Mater Sci 54, 9049–9062 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-019-03502-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-019-03502-y