Study of Thermoelectric Properties of Nanostructured P-Type Si-Ge, Bi-Te, Bi-Sb, and Half-Heusler Bulk Materials

Abstract

Silicon germanium alloys (SiGe) have long been used in thermoelectric modules for deep-space missions to convert radio-isotope heat into electricity. They also hold promise in terrestrial applications such as waste heat recovery. The performance of these materials depends on the dimensionless figure-of-merit ZT (= S2σ T/ κ), where S is the Seebeck coefficient, σ the electrical conductivity, κ the thermal conductivity, and T is the absolute temperature. Since 1960 efforts have been made to improve the ZT of SiGe alloys, with the peak ZT of n-type SiGe reaching 1 at 900 - 950 C. However, the ZT of p-type SiGe has remained low. Current space-flights run on p-type materials with a peak ZT ~ 0.5 and the best reported p-type material has a peak ZT of about 0.65. In recent years, many studies have shown a significant enhancement of ZT in other material systems by utilizing a nanostructuring approach to reduce the thermal conductivity by scattering phonons more effectively than electrons. Here we show, using a low-cost and mass-production ball milling and direct-current induced hot press compaction nanocomposite process, that a 50% improvement in the peak ZT, from 0.65 to 0.95 at 800 - 900C is achieved in p-type nanostructured SiGe bulk alloys. The ZT enhancement mainly comes from a large reduction in the thermal conductivity due to the increased phonon scattering at the grain boundaries and crystal defects formed by lattice distortion, with some contribution from the increased electron power factor at high temperatures. Moreover, nanocomposite approaches have been used to study the thermoelectric properties of other material systems such as bismuth telluride (Bi-Te), bismuth antimony (Bi-Sb), and half-Heusler phases. We observed a significant improvement in peak ZT of nanostructured p- and n-type half-Heusler compounds from 0.5 to 0.8 and 0.8 to 1.0 respectively. The ZT improvement is mainly due to the reduction of thermal conductivity. This nanostructure approach is applicable to many other thermoelectric materials that are useful for automotive, industrial waste heat recovery, space power generation, or solar power conversion applications.