High Thermoelectric Efficiency of n‐type PbS

Abstract

PbS shares several features with the other lead chalcogenides PbX (X: Te, Se), which are good thermoelectric materials. PbS has a potential advantage in that it is quite earth abundant and inexpensive. In this work we tune the transport properties in n-type, single-phase polycrystalline PbS 1−x Cl x (x ≤ 0.008) with different carrier densities. Lead chloride provides a nearly 100% effi cient doping control up to 1.2 × 10 20 cm − 3 . The maximum zT achieved at 850 K is 0.7 with a predicted zT ∼ 1 at 1000 K. This is about twice as high as what was previously reported ( ∼ 0.4) for binary PbS. Compared with the other lead chalcogenides the higher effective mass and higher lattice thermal conductivity makes binary PbS an inferior thermoelectric material. However this study also predicts greater potential of zT improvement in PbS by material engineering such as alloying or nanostructuring compared to PbSe or PbTe. Considering their abundance and low cost, PbS based materials are quite competitive among the lead chalcogenides for thermoelectric applications. 489

Thermoelectric properties of Sn-doped p-type Cu3SbSe4: a compound with large effective mass and small band gap

“…29 the deformation potential coefficient X, was found to be 15 AE 0.5 eV at 300 K. This value is smaller than those found in systems with a smaller effective mass, such as lead chalcogenides 44,45 …”

Thermoelectric properties of p-type polycrystalline SnSe doped with Ag

“…At around 500 C the highest zTs are seen in IV-VI compounds such as PbTe, 2,3 PbSe 4,5 and PbS. 6 In spite of the continuous progress in advancing the performance of these materials, [7][8][9][10][11][12] the presence of Pb has limited their future in domestic applications. SnTe could be an alternative according to a recent study 13 but the use of Te is still a big disadvantage for domestic devices that are more cost-sensitive.…”

Thermoelectric performance of PbSnTeSe high-entropy alloys

“…[2] Ideal thermoelectric materials should possess a high dimensionless figure of merit, ZT, defined as ZT = S 2 T/ ρ(κ e + κ L ), where S is the Seebeck coefficient, T is the absolute temperature, ρ is the electronic resistivity, and κ e and κ L are the carrier and lattice thermal conductivity, respectively. [1,3] Majority of IV-VI compounds tend to be dominant thermoelectric materials in the medium-temperature (500-900 K) range; these include most of lead chalcogenides (PbTe, [4][5][6][7][8] PbSe, [9,10] and PbS [11,12]), and tin chalcogenides (SnTe, [13,14] SnSe, [15][16][17] and SnS [18]). In addition, many mixtures composed of these compounds, such as PbTe-PbSe alloys, [19][20][21] PbTe-PbS alloys, [22,23] PbSe-PbS alloys, [24,25] SnSe-SnS alloys, [26] and PbTerich quaternary alloys of PbTe-PbSe-PbS, [27,28] have been extensively studied for further improving their performance.…”