Mechanisms of Enhanced Phonon Scattering in Nanostructured PbTe Based Thermoelectric Materials
Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: Thermoelectric materials hold promise in devices wherein they can convert thermal energy to electrical energy without any moving parts; they are reliable, lightweight, robust and environmentally friendly.[1] The key issue in thermoelectrics research is to develop materials with significantly increased thermoelectric figure of merit, ZT= σS 2 T/κ, where σ is the electrical conductivity, S is the Seebeck coefficient, and κ= κ e + κ l is the thermal conductivity, composed of the electronic and lattice contributions to thermal conductivity.Thus, thermoelectric performance can be improved by lowering their lattice thermal conductivity and enhancing power factor (σS 2 ).[2,3] In this contribution, we present S/TEM investigation of model nanostructured PbTebased thermoelectric materials coupled with calculations of the lattice thermal conductivity in order to shed light on the fundamental issue of the relationship between nanostructures and lattice thermal conductivity.Our findings have useful implications for the understanding and optimal designing of thermoelectric materials for further improvement in performance.
Source: Microscopy and Microanalysis
Authors: J He, JR Sootsman, S Girard, MG Kanatzidis, VP Dravid
Institution: Northwestern University
Language: English
Subfield: Materials Chemistry
Field: Materials Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2169869293