Premium
Thermoelectric performance of SnTe with ZnO carrier compensation, energy filtering, and multiscale phonon scattering
Author(s) -
Zhou Zhiwei,
Yang Junyou,
Jiang Qinghui,
Zhang Dan,
Xin Jiwu,
Li Xin,
Ren Yangyang,
He Xu
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of the american ceramic society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.9
H-Index - 196
eISSN - 1551-2916
pISSN - 0002-7820
DOI - 10.1111/jace.15088
Subject(s) - thermoelectric effect , materials science , phonon scattering , phonon , thermoelectric materials , scattering , seebeck coefficient , thermal conductivity , condensed matter physics , carrier scattering , work (physics) , compensation (psychology) , optoelectronics , composite material , thermodynamics , optics , physics , psychology , psychoanalysis
In this work, the thermoelectric properties of SnTe have been regulated synergistically by introduction of n ‐type ZnO nanoinclusions. On one hand, the excessive holes in SnTe matrix were compensated properly by n ‐type ZnO, and the Seebeck coefficient has been improved greatly due to the carrier energy filtering effect by a large quantity of ZnO‐SnTe hetero‐junction interface barriers; On the other hand, the thermal conductivity gets reduced by the enhanced phonon scattering from multiscale hierarchical architectures. Consequently, a maximum ZT of ~0.9 at 873K has been obtained in the 0.8 wt% sample, which enhances by 112% in comparison with the nanoinclusion‐free sample.