Lead telluride as a thermoelectric material for thermoelectric power generation

Nanoscale clusters in the high performance thermoelectricAgPbmSbTem+2

“…The dimensionless thermoelectric figure of merit, ZT , 2 of the m ∼ 18 composition material was found to reach 1.7 at 700 kelvin, compared to the highest observed ZT of only 0.84 for PbTe at 648 kelvin in n-doped material. 3,4 This is a surprisingly large enhancement in ZT for the addition of just 10% per formula-unit of silver and antimony ions. It is clearly of the greatest importance to trace the origin of the ZT enhancement.…”

Efficient synthesis of PbTe nanoparticle networks

“…Therefore the growing nanoparticles tend to form continuous networks in order to reduce their surface energy. Among various semiconductors, lead telluride (PbTe) is of particular interest owing to its unique combination of properties including large excitonic Bohr radius, high carrier mobility, efficient multiexciton generation, large dielectric constant, high melting point, low vapor pressure, and relatively high thermoelectric figure of merit [24][25][26][27]. Although PbTe nanoparticles, nanorods, and nanowires have previously been produced, this work represents the first synthesis of nanocrystalline networks of this material.…”

Electronic Transports for Thermoelectric Applications on IV–VI Semiconductors

“…(20) for n-type PbTe, PbSe and PbS in the temperature range 300800 K. In the calculation, we assumed room temperature electron mobilities 1500, 1000 and 600 cm 2 /Vs for PbTe, PbSe and PbS, respectively, and temperature dependence of the mobility ® £ T ¹2.5 was assumed. 16) Band gap and effective mass data used in this calculation are listed in Table 1. 17,18) The strong enhancement in the thermal conductivity of PbTe and PbSe at low impurity concentration with temperature comes from the minority carrier effect in second term in eq.…”