Bismuth telluride (Bi 2 Te 3 )-based solid solutions are state-of-the-art thermoelectric (TE) materials for cooling applications at room temperature with a high figure of merit ZT. Nanostructured TE bismuth telluride thick films have been fabricated by electrodeposition from a solution containing bismuth nitrate and tellurium dioxide in 1 M nitric acid onto gold-sputtered aluminum substrates. A conventional threeelectrode cell was used with a platinum sheet as the counter electrode and a saturated calomel electrode (SCE) as the reference electrode. Ethylene glycol (EG) was added to the electrolyte in order to increase the thickness of the deposited films, and its effect on the structure, morphology, and compositional stoichiometry of the deposited film was investigated. SEM and XRD were used for structural and compositional characterization. Bismuth telluride films with thicknesses of ca. 350 µm, a stoichiometric composition of Bi 2 Te 3 , and a hexagonal crystal structure were obtained. A microprobe technique was used to measure the lateral Seebeck coefficient in several samples. The free-standing films were shown to be of high homogeneity, where the abundance distribution of the Seebeck coefficient showed a half width of less than 1 µV K -1 and a high electrical conductivity of around 450 S cm -1 at room temperature.

Bismuth telluride is the state-of-the-art thermoelectric (TE) material for cooling applications with a figure of merit of ∼1 at 300 K. There is a need for the development of TE materials based on the concept of thick films for miniaturized devices due to mechanical and manufacturing constraints for the thermoelement dimensions. We reported earlier a method for the fabrication of high-quality nanostructured bismuth telluride thick films with thickness from 100 to 350 µm based on electrochemical deposition techniques. In this paper, annealing is performed to further improve the TE performance of the nanostructured bismuth telluride thick films and n/p-type solid solutions are successfully fabricated by doping Se and Sb, respectively. The conditions for both annealing and doping for the thick films are investigated, and the effects of annealing and doping on morphology, crystalline phase, grain size, Seebeck coefficient, homogeneity, electrical conductivity, and power factor of the bismuth telluride thick films have been studied.

This report deals with converting the agriculture waste (rice straw) to environmental cleaner materials (biochar) using airless pyrolysis followed by eco-friendly activation. The biochar (p-Biochar) obtained after pyrolysis step (poorly active material) was activated using wet attrition method to give m-Biochar (highly active materials). The both p-Biochar and m-Biochar were characterized in detail and utilized for MB and CV dye removal from aqueous solution. Various parameters affecting the adsorption process such as dye concentration, adsorbent dose, contact time, temperature, NaCl dose and pH were investigated. The adsorption isotherm was well fitted using Langmuir isotherm, and the maximum adsorption capacity is 90.91 and 44.64 mg/g, for MB and CV dyes, respectively. The contact time data obtained showed that the two dyes were poorly adsorbed over p-Biochar. The equilibrium was reached quickly in 15 min for MB dye and 20 min for CV dye using the m-Biochar, and removal percent was 94.45 and 92.70% for MB and CV dyes, respectively. Moreover, the kinetic isotherm presented very well fitted by pseudo-second-order model. In addition, the adsorption percent increases with further increasing the pH value. Finally, we observed that m-Biochar highly adsorbs the MB dye compared with the CV dye over all experimental conditions.