Lead‐Free Thermoelectrics: High Figure of Merit in p‐type AgSn<sub>m</sub>SbTe<sub>m+2</sub>

Han, Mi Kyung; Androulakis, J.; Kim, Sung Jin; Kanatzidis, Mercouri G.

doi:10.1002/aenm.201100613

Cited by 78 publications

(83 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Zhang et al 7 reported a resonant level near the Fermi level of SnTe that was introduced by indium doping, and found a notable enhancement of the Seebeck coefficient. In conjunction with a successful reduction of the thermal conductivity through renement of the microstructure by ball milling, they reported a ZT of 1.1 around 873 K. Han et al 22,23 reported a ZT of 0.9-1 for SnTe-AgSbTe 2 alloys. Recently, an exciting ZT of $1.4 at 923 K was achieved for SnTe through codoping of In/Cd together with introduction of CdS nanostructures.…”

Section: -15mentioning

confidence: 99%

Lead-free SnTe-based thermoelectrics: enhancement of thermoelectric performance by doping with Gd/Ag

et al. 2016

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SnTe, with the same rock-salt structure as PbTe, is a potentially attractive thermoelectric material. Pristine SnTe has poor thermoelectric performance because of its very high hole concentration resulting from intrinsic Sn vacancies, which leads to a high thermal conductivity and a low Seebeck coefficient. In this work, the thermoelectric properties of SnTe were modified by doping with different contents of gadolinium and silver. It is found that SnTe doped with optimal gadolinium (i.e. Gd0.06Sn0.94Te) exhibited extraordinarily low lattice thermal conductivity that is close to the theoretical minimum. The drastic reduction of lattice thermal conductivity is attributed to the formation of nanoprecipitates, which strongly scatter phonons by mass fluctuation between a second phase and matrix coupled with mesoscale scattering via grain boundaries. Further doping Gd0.06Sn0.94Te with Ag leads to a higher Seebeck coefficient due to the decreased carrier concentration and adjusted phase composition. Optimal Ag doping leads to a 3 times and 2 times enhancement of the figure of merit (ZT) in comparison with SnTe and Gd0.06Sn0.94Te, respectively, i.e. a ZT of ∼1.1 was obtained for 11 atom% Ag-containing Gd0.06Sn0.94Te at 873 K.

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Section: -15mentioning

confidence: 99%

Lead-free SnTe-based thermoelectrics: enhancement of thermoelectric performance by doping with Gd/Ag

et al. 2016

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“…[8][9][10][11][12] SnTe is well-known as a non-stoichiometric p-type semiconductor with a very high hole concentration of 10 20 -10 21 cm À3 at room temperature arising from the intrinsically present Sn vacancies. 11 It was previously reported that by alloying a proper amount of AgSbTe 2 with SnTe, creating the quaternary system AgSn m SbTe m+2 , the hole concentration of SnTe can be reduced (not by Hall measurements) as evidenced by the variation of the Seebeck coefficient as a function of m. 8 The most recent study of this system by Xing et al, however, pointed towards an opposite direction that the hole concentration of SnTe increases with increasing AgSbTe 2 although curiously the Seebeck coefficient also increases in this process. Conventional doping cannot signicantly decrease the hole population of SnTe, 12,15 although we recently reported a relatively low hole concentration of $5 Â 10 19 cm À3 in Sn self-compensated SnTe via Cd doping.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

SnTe–AgBiTe₂ as an efficient thermoelectric material with low thermal conductivity

et al. 2014

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SnTe is an intriguing alternative to its sister compound PbTe in thermoelectric energy conversion because of their electronic and structural similarity; however, it is challenging to optimize its thermoelectric performance to the level of PbTe because of the difficulties in decreasing its intrinsically large hole population and high thermal conductivity arising from the tin vacancies. We demonstrate here that by alloying some AgBiTe 2 in SnTe, thus forming AgSn x BiTe x+2 compositions the hole concentration can be duly decreased because of the high efficiency of Bi as an electron donor. The lattice thermal conductivity is also decreased due to the strong scattering of phonons (by point defect scattering as well as Ag-rich nanostructures) to achieve a value of $0.7 W m À1 K À1 at $750 K. As a result, a high thermoelectric figure ZT of merit of $1.1 at 775 K is achieved by chemical composition optimization (Â$15), making lead free SnTe-AgBiTe 2 a promising thermoelectric material.

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“…Lead chalcogenides and their alloys can be engineered to exhibit high ZTs; however, environmental concern regarding Pb prevents their deployment in large-scale applications (6)(7)(8)(9)(10). Tin telluride (SnTe), a lead-free IV-VI narrow band-gap semiconductor has not been considered favorably as a good thermoelectric material because of its low ZT due to the relatively low Seebeck coefficient and high electronic thermal conductivity caused by intrinsic Sn vacancies (11)(12)(13), although SnTe has been used to alloy with other tellurides for better TE properties (14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26). Even though there has been no real success in achieving good TE properties of lead-free SnTe, the similarity between the electronic band structure of SnTe and that of PbTe and PbSe (27)(28)(29)(30)(31) suggests it has the potential to be a good TE material, especially given the two valence bands (light-hole and heavy-hole bands) that contribute to the hole density of states.…”

Section: G Ood Thermoelectric (Te) Materials Should Not Only Have Highmentioning

confidence: 99%

High thermoelectric performance by resonant dopant indium in nanostructured SnTe

Zhang

Liao

Lan

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

660

765

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From an environmental perspective, lead-free SnTe would be preferable for solid-state waste heat recovery if its thermoelectric figure-of-merit could be brought close to that of the leadcontaining chalcogenides. In this work, we studied the thermoelectric properties of nanostructured SnTe with different dopants, and found indium-doped SnTe showed extraordinarily large Seebeck coefficients that cannot be explained properly by the conventional two-valence band model. We attributed this enhancement of Seebeck coefficients to resonant levels created by the indium impurities inside the valence band, supported by the firstprinciples simulations. This, together with the lower thermal conductivity resulting from the decreased grain size by ball milling and hot pressing, improved both the peak and average nondimensional figure-of-merit (ZT) significantly. A peak ZT of ∼1.1 was obtained in 0.25 atom % In-doped SnTe at about 873 K.

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Lead‐Free Thermoelectrics: High Figure of Merit in p‐type AgSn_mSbTe_m+2

Cited by 78 publications

References 42 publications

Lead-free SnTe-based thermoelectrics: enhancement of thermoelectric performance by doping with Gd/Ag

Lead-free SnTe-based thermoelectrics: enhancement of thermoelectric performance by doping with Gd/Ag

SnTe–AgBiTe₂ as an efficient thermoelectric material with low thermal conductivity

High thermoelectric performance by resonant dopant indium in nanostructured SnTe

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Lead‐Free Thermoelectrics: High Figure of Merit in p‐type AgSnmSbTem+2

Cited by 78 publications

References 42 publications

Lead-free SnTe-based thermoelectrics: enhancement of thermoelectric performance by doping with Gd/Ag

Lead-free SnTe-based thermoelectrics: enhancement of thermoelectric performance by doping with Gd/Ag

SnTe–AgBiTe2 as an efficient thermoelectric material with low thermal conductivity

High thermoelectric performance by resonant dopant indium in nanostructured SnTe

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Product

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Lead‐Free Thermoelectrics: High Figure of Merit in p‐type AgSn_mSbTe_m+2

SnTe–AgBiTe₂ as an efficient thermoelectric material with low thermal conductivity