GeTe is a promising mid-temperature thermoelectric compound but inevitably contains excessive Ge vacancies hindering its performance maximization. This work reveals that significant enhancement in the dimensionless figure of merit (ZT) could be realized by defect structure engineering from point defects to line and plane defects of Ge vacancies. The evolved defects including dislocations and nanodomains enhance phonon scattering to reduce lattice thermal conductivity in GeTe. The accumulation of cationic vacancies toward the formation of dislocations and planar defects weakens the scattering against electronic carriers, securing the carrier mobility and power factor. This synergistic effect on electronic and thermal transport properties remarkably increases the quality factor. As a result, a maximum ZT > 2.3 at 648 K and a record-high average ZT (300-798 K) were obtained for Bi0.07Ge0.90Te in lead-free GeTe-based compounds. This work demonstrates an important strategy for maximizing the thermoelectric performance of GeTe-based materials by engineering the defect structures, which could also be applied to other thermoelectric materials.

Nanostructure engineering has been extensively applied to ZnO in an effort to improve its performance in thermoelectric material, solar cell, and nanogenerator applications. Nano-structured ZnO bulks are limited by their inherently low mobility caused by the high density of grain boundaries and interfaces. In this study, a hybrid micro/nano structure composed of nearly coherent grain boundaries with a low misorientation degree among the nanograins was successfully fabricated in Zn 1Àx Al x O (x ¼ 0, 0.01, 0.02, 0.03, 0.04 mol) bulks via hydrothermal synthesis and spark plasma sintering. Despite the large amount of nanograin boundaries and interfaces in the resulting material, a high carrier mobility value (50.7 cm 2 V À1 s À1 ) was obtained in the x ¼ 0.2 sampleclose to the level shown by ZnO single crystals and far higher than that of its ordinary nano-structured counterparts (<15 cm 2 V À1 s À1 ). A reduced thermal conductivity value of 2.1 W m À1 K À1 at 1073 K was also obtained in the micro/nano-structured x ¼ 0.02 bulk due to extremely effective scattering at boundaries and interfaces also present in the nano-structured counterparts. After the simultaneous optimization of both electrical and thermal transport properties, the micro/nanostructured x ¼ 0.02 sample showed a high ZT value (up to 0.36) at 1073 K. The proposed micro/nanostructure may also be applicable to other thermoelectric materials for further ZT enhancement.

Lead-free manganese telluride has been considered to be a promising candidate for mid-temperature thermoelectric materials. In this work, we report point defect scattering-induced reduction of thermal conductivity in MnTe with Se alloying, fabricated by a facile method combining mechanical alloying and spark plasma sintering. A low lattice thermal conductivity of 0.56 W/mK was obtained for MnTe0.92Se0.08, which is quite close to the amorphous limits. A detailed Debye model analysis reveals the underlying mechanism of phonon scattering and well predicts the thermal conductivity with different contents of Se. Meanwhile, a slight increase of carrier concentration was also observed after Se alloying, accompanied by a variation of energy gap that may be associated with the competition among anions in trapping charges. Further Na doping leads to enhanced electrical transport properties, achieving a maximum ZT value of 1.03 at 873 K. An average ZT of 0.52 and a calculated efficiency of more than 9% also suggest the promising application of MnTe at medium temperatures.

In this paper, aluminium phosphate binders were synthesized using Al(OH) 3 and H 3 PO 4 as the raw materials. These binders, with the curing agent MgO and filler ZrO 2 , were used to prepare coatings by brush painting on the carbon fibre-reinforced epoxy resin matrix composites. The influences of synthesis conditions such as the P/Al ratio, concentration of the reactant and reaction temperature on the viscosity of binders and the bonding strength of corresponding coatings were investigated by using a viscometer and a universal testing machine. The structures and compositions of aluminium phosphate binders were characterized by X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared and Raman spectroscopy. The results show that with a decrease in the ratio of P/Al, the degree of polymerization of the aluminium phosphate binder increases, the viscosity increases, while the bonding strength of the coating decreases. When P/Al = 3:1, the reaction product is Al(H 2 PO 4) 3 with the best properties of bonding strength. As the concentration of phosphoric acid solution increases in the range of 60-80%, the viscosity increases on account of larger quantity of viscous molecules in a unit volume and higher extent of polymerization of the phosphorus oxygen tetrahedron. The compositions of aluminium phosphate binders are almost the same when the reaction temperature changes from 120 to 180 • C, so the viscosity of the binder and the bonding strength of the coating do not exhibit obvious changes along with temperature.

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