Development of Nanostructured BiTe with High Thermoelectric Performance by Scalable Synthesis and Microstructure Manipulations.

Nanostructuring of thermoelectric (TE) materials leads to improved energy conversion performance; however, it requires a perfect fit between the nanoprecipitates' chemistry and crystal structure and those of the matrix. We synthesize bulk BiTe from molecular precursors and characterize their structure and chemistry using electron microscopy and analyze their TE transport properties in the range of 300-500 K. We find that synthesis from BiO + NaTeO precursors results in n-type BiTe containing a high number density ( ∼ 2.

Topologically-Enhanced Thermoelectric Properties in BiTe-Based Compounds: Effects of Grain Size and Misorientation.

Topological insulators (TIs) and thermoelectric (TE) materials seem to belong to distinct physical realms; however, in practice, they both share common characteristics. Introducing concepts from TIs into TE materials to enhance their performance and achieve better understanding of electronic transport requires extensive research. Particularly, grain size, misorientation, and grain boundary (GB) character are of utmost importance to attain effective charge carrier transport in TE polycrystals; these factors, however, have not been thoroughly explored.

Effects of Co-doping and Microstructure on Charge Carrier Energy Filtering in Thermoelectric Titanium-Doped Zinc Aluminum Oxide.

ZnO is a promising thermoelectric (TE) material for high-temperature applications; however, its TE performance is limited by strong coupling between electrical and thermal transport. In this study, we synthesized Al and Ti co-doped ZnO by a solid-state reaction and air sintering at 1500 °C and analyzed the microstructure to establish its correlation with TE properties. The TE transport properties were measured between room temperature and 800 °C, and electronic properties were calculated from first principles calculations.