Towards the high-throughput synthesis of bulk materials: thermoelectric PbTe–PbSe–SnTe–SnSe alloys

Abstract

Despite extensive research, much of PbSnTeSe alloying space is unexplored. High-throughput bulk synthesis augments literature with high-resolution (121 sample) property maps.

High‐Performance Thermoelectric SnSe: Aqueous Synthesis, Innovations, and Challenges

“…To solve this issue, as one of the most convenient methods to fabricate SnSe crystals, advanced aqueous synthesis‐based solution routes have been constructively employed to achieve high thermoelectric performance in polycrystalline SnSe 3. Compared with traditional melting and mechanical alloying routes,167,168 advanced aqueous synthesis‐based solution routes possess unique advantages, including convenient morphology control to achieve high anisotropy,25 exceptional high doping solubility to tune the n / p ,48,71 intensive local lattice imperfections to reduce κ l ,48,71 special doping behaviors,22,71 and distinctive vacancy engineering for property synergy 22,24,25. Figure 1b,c shows temperature‐dependent ZT and corresponding peak and average ZT values for polycrystalline SnSe fabricated through different techniques,13,16,22,46,58,62,95,99,101 for each technique we have chosen the reported highest performance.…”

The Verification of Thermoelectric Performance Obtained by High-Throughput Calculations: The Case of GeS2 Monolayer From First-Principles Calculations

“…Therefore, some methods like doping (Liu et al, 2008), alloying (Row et al, 1981), and nanostructuring (Yuan et al, 2018) were reported to enhance the ZT value. Except for these approaches, screening new TE materials is also an effective strategy to improve the ZT value via experimental research (Nielsen et al, 2013;Tang et al, 2015;Li et al, 2018) and theoretical predictions [such as first-principles calculations (Wang et al, 2017;Ouyang et al, 2018) and high-throughput computations (Chen et al, 2016;Li M. et al, 2019;Li R. et al, 2019;Ortiz et al, 2019)].…”

Toward autonomous design and synthesis of novel inorganic materials

“…Working at high temperatures for long periods of time also poses potential problems caused by the melting of samples and the degradation of containers. Recent efforts have made steps to automate a few key aspects of solid-state synthesis for several classes of materials including PbTe-based thermoelectrics 42 , yttrium-doped zirconia 43 , and Zr-Ti-C-B ceramics 44 . These existing methods increase the rate at which solid-state syntheses are carried out by decomposing the entire procedure into modular components, each of which is either automated via robotic systems or designed to be conducted in a highly parallelized manner, thereby reducing the time spent by the human researcher per synthesized sample.…”

“…If mechanochemical synthesis is desired, high-energy ball milling or highly reactive starting materials can be used to encourage the reaction 17 . If, instead, the goal of ball milling is to obtain a well-mixed sample while avoiding any reactions, then relatively inert precursors can be used with low-energy milling 42 . The parallelization of compacting and densification can be achieved by stacking samples on top of one another, separated by an inert material, and loading them altogether into a press.…”