Studies on the Bi[subscript 2]Te[subscript 3]-Bi[subscript 2]Se[subscript 3]-Bi[subscript 2]S[subscript 3] system for mid-temperature thermoelectric energy conversion

• Main Authors: Liu, Weishu (Author), Lukas, Kevin (Author), McEnaney, Kenneth (Contributor), Lee, Sangyeop (Contributor), Zhang, Qian (Author), Opeil, Cyril (Author), Chen, Gang (Contributor), Ren, Zhifeng (Author)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2014-05-09T14:53:41Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

Bismuth telluride (Bi[subscript 2]Te[subscript 3]) and its alloys have been widely investigated as thermoelectric materials for cooling applications at around room temperature. We report a systematic study on many compounds in the Bi[subscript 2]Te[subscript 3]-Bi[subscript 2]Se[subscript 3]-Bi[subscript 2]S[subscript 3] system. All the samples were fabricated by high energy ball milling followed by hot pressing. Among the investigated compounds, Bi[subscript 2]Te[subscript 2]S[subscript 1] shows a peak ZT ~0.8 at 300 °C and Bi[subscript 2]Se[subscript 1]S[subscript 2] ~0.8 at 500 °C. The results show that these compounds can be used for mid-temperature power generation applications. The leg efficiency of thermoelectric conversion for segmented elements based on these n-type materials could potentially reach 12.5% with a cold side at 25 °C and a hot side at 500 °C if appropriate p-type legs are paired, which could compete well with the state-of-the-art n-type materials within the same temperature range, including lead tellurides, lead selenides, lead sulfides, filled-skutterudites, and half Heuslers.
United States. Dept. of Energy. Office of Basic Energy Sciences (Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center Award DE-SC0001299/DE-FG02-09ER46577)