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Lanthanide Contraction as a Design Factor for High‐Performance Half‐Heusler Thermoelectric Materials
Author(s) -
Liu Yintu,
Fu Chenguang,
Xia Kaiyang,
Yu Junjie,
Zhao Xinbing,
Pan Hongge,
Felser Claudia,
Zhu Tiejun
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
advanced materials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 10.707
H-Index - 527
eISSN - 1521-4095
pISSN - 0935-9648
DOI - 10.1002/adma.201800881
Subject(s) - thermoelectric effect , materials science , lanthanide contraction , thermoelectric materials , lanthanide , alloy , thermal conductivity , electron mobility , optoelectronics , condensed matter physics , metallurgy , thermodynamics , composite material , ion , physics , quantum mechanics
Forming solid solutions, as an effective strategy to improve thermoelectric performance, has a dilemma that alloy scattering will reduce both the thermal conductivity and carrier mobility. Here, an intuitive way is proposed to decouple the opposite effects, that is, using lanthanide contraction as a design factor to select alloying atoms with large mass fluctuation but small radius difference from the host atoms. Typical half‐Heusler alloys, n‐type (Zr,Hf)NiSn and p‐type (Nb,Ta)FeSb solid solutions, are taken as paradigms to attest the validity of this design strategy, which exhibit greatly suppressed lattice thermal conductivity and maintained carrier mobility. Furthermore, by considering lanthanide contraction, n‐type (Zr,Hf)CoSb‐based alloys with high zT of ≈1.0 are developed. These results highlight the significance of lanthanide contraction as a design factor in enhancing the thermoelectric performance and reveal the practical potential of (Zr,Hf)CoSb‐based half‐Heusler compounds due to the matched n‐type and p‐type thermoelectric performance.