Open AccessLow Thermal Conductivity and Magneto-suppressed Thermal Transport in a Highly Oriented FeSb2 Single Crystal
Author(s) -
Zhong Chen,
Xin Ding,
Mingxiang Xu
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
acs omega
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.779
H-Index - 40
ISSN - 2470-1343
DOI - 10.1021/acsomega.1c02803
Subject(s) - thermal conductivity , materials science , single crystal , condensed matter physics , thermoelectric effect , thermoelectric materials , crystal (programming language) , crystallinity , phonon scattering , thermal conduction , composite material , nuclear magnetic resonance , thermodynamics , physics , computer science , programming language
Thermoelectric materials have been widely explored for the potential applications in power generation and refrigeration fields. High thermal conductivity (∼500 W/m K) of single-crystal FeSb 2 limits the application in cryogenic cooling. In this work, the FeSb 2 single crystal has been synthesized by the self-flux method. The rocking curve results reveal that the single crystal possesses quite high crystallinity. The micromorphology image shows that the single crystal is pyknotic without observable pores or cracks. Surprisingly, the thermal conductivity is reduced by 2 orders of magnitude compared with the previous reports, which can be attributed to the enhanced phonon scattering by the defects and impurities. Furthermore, the magnetic field can further suppress the thermal transport by reducing the phonon mean-free path. The maximum suppression rate of the thermal conductivity reaches 14% at 60 K when the magnetic field varies from 0 to 9 T. In this work, we have prepared the FeSb 2 single crystal with low thermal conductivity, and the magneto-suppressed thermal transport strategy can be applied to other thermoelectric materials.