Fabrication of Nanocomposite Thermoelectric Materials by a Pulsed Laser Deposition Method

Abstract

We applied a pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique to fabricate nanocomposite half-Heusler thermoelectrics by employing two different methods: a dry process and a wet process. First, we tried to obtain nanosized thermoelectric particles by using PLD in a liquid solvent. Nanosized (<100 nm) spherical and crystalline half-Heusler particles containing Ti, Zr, Hf, Ni, and Sn elements were obtained by this method, showing good controllability of stoichiometry. The key is to select a solvent that prevents oxidation. Second, the dry PLD process was employed to coat the thermoelectric powder with metal oxides. To this end, we developed a PLD coating apparatus. After sintering the coated powder using the spark plasma sintering (SPS) technique, we confirmed that a nanosized layer of the metal oxides was uniformly formed at the grain boundaries of the half-Heusler matrix. With these two examples, the capability of the PLD techniques to fabricate well-controlled nanocomposite thermoelectric materials is demonstrated.