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We report the synthesis, characterization and evaluation of the thermoelectric properties of Cu 3 SbSe 3 with a view to explore its utility as an useful thermoelectric material due to its intrinsically low thermal conductivity. Cu 3 SbSe 3 was synthesized employing a solid state reaction process followed by spark plasma sintering, and the synthesized material was extensively characterized for its phase, composition and structure, which suggested formation of a single-phase. The measured electrical transport properties of Cu 3 SbSe 3 indicated p-type conduction in this material. The electrical transport behavior agrees well with that predicted theoretically using first-principle density-functional theory calculations, employing generalized gradient approximation. The measured thermal conductivity was found to be 0.26 W m À1 K À1 at 550 K, which is the lowest reported thus far for Cu 3 SbSe 3 and is among the lowest for state-of-the-art thermoelectric materials. Despite its ultralow thermal conductivity coupled with a moderate Seebeck coefficient, the calculated value of its thermoelectric figure-of-merit was found to be exceptionally low (<0.1), which was primarily attributed to its low electrical conductivity. Nevertheless, it is argued that Cu 3 SbSe 3 , due its environmentally-friendly constituent elements, ultralow thermal conductivity and moderate thermopower, could be a potentially useful thermoelectric material as the power factor can be favorably tailored by tuning the carrier concentration using suitable metallic dopants.

We report the synthesis of thermoelectric compounds, Cu3SbSe3 and Cu3SbSe4, employing the conventional fusion method followed by spark plasma sintering. Their thermoelectric properties indicated that despite its higher thermal conductivity, Cu3SbSe4 exhibited a much larger value of thermoelectric figure-of-merit as compared to Cu3SbSe3, which is primarily due to its higher electrical conductivity. The thermoelectric compatibility factor of Cu3SbSe4 was found to be ∼1.2 as compared to 0.2 V−1 for Cu3SbSe3 at 550 K. The results of the mechanical properties of these two compounds indicated that their microhardness and fracture toughness values were far superior to the other competing state-of-the-art thermoelectric materials.

Fabrication and Spark plasma sintering of nanostructured bismuth telluride (Bi2Te3).

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Despite SiGe being one of the most widely studied thermoelectric materials owing to its application in radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG), the thermoelectric figure-of merit (ZT) of p-type SiGe is still quite low, resulting in poor device efficiencies. In the present study, we report a substantial enhancement in ZT∼ 1.2 at 900 °C for p-type nanostructured Si80Ge20 alloys by creating several types of defect features within the Si80Ge20 nanostructured matrix in a spectrum of nano to meso-scale dimensions during its nanostructuring, by employing mechanical alloying followed by spark plasma sintering. This enhancement in ZT, which is ∼25% over the existing state-of-the-art value for a p-type nanostructured Si80Ge20 alloy, is primarily due to its ultralow thermal conductivity of ∼2.04 W m(-1) K(-1) at 900 °C, resulting from the scattering of low-to-high wavelength heat-carrying phonons by different types of defect features in a range of nano to meso-scale dimensions in the Si80Ge20 nanostructured matrix. These include point defects, dislocations, isolated amorphous regions, nano-scale grain boundaries and more importantly, the nano to meso-scale residual porosity distributed throughout the Si80Ge20 matrix. These nanoscale multi-dimensional defect features have been characterized by employing scanning and transmission electron microscopy and correlated with the electrical and thermal transport properties, based on which the enhancement of ZT has been discussed.

Defect engineering of thermoelectric (TE) materials enables the alteration of their crystal lattice by creating an atomic-scale disorder, which can facilitate a synergistic modulation of the electrical and phonon transport, leading to the enhancement of their TE properties. This work employs a compositional nonstoichiometry strategy for manipulation of Nivacancies and Ni-interstitials through Ni-deficient and Ni-excess compositions of (Zr, Hf)Ni 1±x Sn-based half-Heusler (HH) alloys to realize a stateof-the-art TE figure-of-merit (ZT) of ∼1.4 at 873 K in 4 atomic % Ni-excess HH composition, which corresponds to a remarkable TE conversion efficiency of ∼12%, estimated using the cumulative temperature dependence model. These alloys are synthesized employing arc-melting followed by spark plasma sintering and are characterized for their phase, morphology, structure, and composition along with electrical and thermal transport properties to examine the implication of Niexcess and Ni-deficiency on the TE properties of the synthesized Zr 0.6 Hf 0.4 NiSn HH alloy. A significant enhancement (∼30%) of ZT is observed in the low doping limit of Ni-excess HH compositions over their stoichiometric counterpart due to Ni-interstitials and in situ full-Heusler precipitation, which enable a strong phonon scattering for a drastic reduction in lattice thermal conductivity and lead to an enhancement of ZT. However, Ni-deficient HH compositions exhibit a deterioration in the TE properties owing to the vacancy-induced bipolarity. The defect-mediated optimization of electrical and thermal transport, thus, opens up promising avenues for boosting the TE performance of HH alloys.