Abstract
Herein, we report on a scalable synthesis of Au nanodot (Au-ND)/Bi2Te3 nanotube (BT-NT) nanocomposites by the bottom-up synthesis of hybrid raw materials and subsequent spark plasma sintering, and their thermoelectric properties were systematically compared with those of Au-doped Bi2Te3 compounds. The Au nanodots were included as seeds and co-crystallized in the crystal growth of BT-NTs, which were well-dispersed in the Bi2Te3 matrix as nanoinclusions (10-20 nm). The thermoelectric performance (ZT) of the Au-ND/BT-NT nanocomposite was found to be enhanced by ∼67%, compared to pristine Bi2Te3 due to electron energy filtering and phonon scattering effects in the presence of embedded Au-NDs. The resulting compound showed an enhanced power factor (23.0 × 10-4 W m-1 K-2 @ 440 K, 27% improvement) and a reduced lattice thermal conductivity (0.47 W m-1 K-1 @ 440 K, 22% reduction). The peak ZT value of the present compound (0.95 @ 480 K) is larger than that of n-type single crystalline Bi2(Te,Se)3, which is one of the highest among the reported values for n-type Bi2Te3-based materials synthesized using a soft chemical route.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1313-1319 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Journal of Materials Chemistry C |
Volume | 4 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2016 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© The Royal Society of Chemistry 2016.
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Chemistry(all)
- Materials Chemistry