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Research Article

Origin of inhomogeneity in spark plasma sintered bismuth antimony telluride thermoelectric nanocomposites

Enzheng Shi1,2,§, Shuang Cui3,4,§, Nicholas Kempf5, Qingfeng Xing2, Thomas Chasapis6, Huazhang Zhu1, Zhe Li1, Je-Hyeong Bahk7, Jeffrey G. Snyder6, Yanliang Zhang5, Renkun Chen3, Yue Wu1,2( )
Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA
Ames Laboratory, Department of Energy, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California-San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA
Buildings and Thermal Sciences Center, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO 80401, USA
Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA
Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA

§Enzheng Shi and Shuang Cui contributed equally to this work.

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Abstract

Anisotropy and inhomogeneity are ubiquitous in spark plasma sintered thermoelectric devices. However, the origin of inhomogeneity in thermoelectric nanocomposites has rarely been investigated so far. Herein, we systematically study the impact of inhomogeneity in spark plasma sintered bismuth antimony telluride (BiSbTe) thermoelectric nanocomposites fabricated from solution-synthesized nanoplates. The figure of merit can reach 1.18, which, however, can be overestimated to 1.88 without considering the inhomogeneity. Our study reveals that the inhomogeneity in thermoelectric properties is attributed to the non-uniformity of porosity, textures and elemental distribution from electron backscatter diffraction and energy-dispersive spectroscopy characterizations. This finding suggests that the optimization of bulk material homogeneity should also be actively pursued in any future thermoelectric material research.

Keywords

bismuth antimony telluridesolution synthesisthermoelectricsinhomogeneity

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Nano Research
Volume 13 Issue 5,
May 2020
Pages 1339-1346
DOI: 10.1007/s12274-019-2590-6
Cite this article:
Shi E, Cui S, Kempf N, et al. Origin of inhomogeneity in spark plasma sintered bismuth antimony telluride thermoelectric nanocomposites. Nano Research, 2020, 13(5): 1339-1346. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-019-2590-6
Topics:
Antimony compoundsEnergy dispersive spectroscopyNanocompositesTellurium compounds

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Received: 21 August 2019
Revised: 19 November 2019
Accepted: 01 December 2019
Published: 18 December 2019
© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019
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