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Grain Size Dependence of the Thermoelectric Performance in Cu2.98Co0.02SbSe4

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Abstract

Ternary Cu3SbSe4 thermoelectric material with a diamond-like structure exhibits good thermoelectric performance in the middle-temperature region. In this study, Cu2.98Co0.02SbSe4 material with intrinsically low thermal conductivity was prepared by a melting–ball milling–hot pressing process. The maximum zT value for the Cu2.98Co0.02SbSe4 sample was 0.7 at 650 K, which was about 190% higher than that of the pristine sample. The improvement in thermoelectric performance was ascribed to the realization of multi-scale features induced by ball milling. It was found that multiple scattering centers of phonons were formed via interfacial engineering, including dislocations, nano-holes and grain boundaries, which offers an applicable pathway for the reduction of lattice thermal conductivity.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51772132), Shandong Province Higher Educational Youth Innovative Science and Technology Program (2019KJA018), and Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2019MEM019). The authors would like to thank Yanzhong Pei Group at Tongji University for the partial measurement of TE properties.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Jinan, Jinan, 250022, China

    Lin Bo, Lei Wang, Fujin Li, Ruipeng Zhang, Min Zuo & Degang Zhao

  2. Heze Institute of Product Inspection and Testing, Heze, 274000, China

    Yangbo Hou

  3. Institute for Advanced Technology, Shandong University, Jinan, 250061, China

    Sida Liu

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  1. Lin Bo
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Contributions

BL: conceptualization, methodology, writing—original draft, investigation. WL: data curation. HY: validation. LF: investigation, resources. SL: investigation. ZR: data curation. ZM: funding acquisition. ZD: writing—review and editing, supervision, funding acquisition, investigation.

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Correspondence to Degang Zhao.

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Bo, L., Wang, L., Hou, Y. et al. Grain Size Dependence of the Thermoelectric Performance in Cu2.98Co0.02SbSe4. J. Electron. Mater. 51, 4846–4854 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-022-09718-0

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