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Effects of Annealing on Microstructure and Thermoelectric Properties of Nanostructured CoSb3

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Abstract

Nanocrystallization of thermoelectric materials is an effective way to reduce their thermal conductivity, but so far the thermal stability of nanostructured thermoelectric materials has been little studied. Effects of annealing treatment on the microstructure and the thermoelectric properties of nanostructured CoSb3 were investigated in this work. Samples with average grain size of 300 nm were prepared by spark plasma sintering of high-energy ball-milled nanosized CoSb3 powders. The study shows that annealing has a very significant impact on the grain size of the samples. The grain size of the sample with 100 h annealing is three times greater than before annealing. The major phase in the 150-h-annealed sample is still skutterudite, except for a trace amount of Sb phase. With increasing annealing time, the density reduces slightly. In addition, the power factor of the sample decreases, thus resulting in a decrease of the thermoelectric figure of merit.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering Structure and Mechanics, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Peng-Fei Wen, Zhong-Wei Ruan, Li-Sheng Liu & Peng-Cheng Zhai

  2. State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Peng Li & Qing-Jie Zhang

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  1. Peng-Fei Wen
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  2. Peng Li
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  3. Qing-Jie Zhang
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  4. Zhong-Wei Ruan
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  6. Peng-Cheng Zhai
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Correspondence to Peng-Fei Wen.

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Wen, PF., Li, P., Zhang, QJ. et al. Effects of Annealing on Microstructure and Thermoelectric Properties of Nanostructured CoSb3 . J. Electron. Mater. 42, 1443–1448 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-012-2286-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-012-2286-0

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