Polymer-Derived Silicon Oxycarbide Ceramics as Promising Next-Generation Sustainable Thermoelectrics

Adhimoolam Bakthavachalam Kousaalya; Xiaoyu Zeng; Mehmet Karakaya; Terry Tritt; Srikanth Pilla; Apparao M Rao

doi:10.1021/acsami.7b17394

Polymer-Derived Silicon Oxycarbide Ceramics as Promising Next-Generation Sustainable Thermoelectrics

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2018 Jan 24;10(3):2236-2241. doi: 10.1021/acsami.7b17394. Epub 2018 Jan 12.

Authors

Adhimoolam Bakthavachalam Kousaalya¹, Xiaoyu Zeng¹, Mehmet Karakaya¹, Terry Tritt¹, Srikanth Pilla¹, Apparao M Rao¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Automotive Engineering, ‡Clemson Composites Center, §Department of Physics & Astronomy, and ⊥Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Clemson University , Greenville, South Carolina 29601, United States.

PMID: 29309124
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.7b17394

Abstract

We demonstrate the potential of polymer-derived ceramics (PDC) as next-generation sustainable thermoelectrics. Thermoelectric behavior of polymer-derived silicon oxycarbide (SiOC) ceramics (containing hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) as filler) was studied as a function of measurement temperature. SiOC, sintered at 1300 °C exhibited invariant low thermal conductivity (∼1.5 W/(m·K)) over 30-600 °C, coupled with a small increase in both Seebeck coefficient and electrical conductivity, with increase in measurement temperature (30-150 °C). SiOC ceramics containing 1 wt % h-BN showed the highest Seebeck coefficient (-33 μV/K) for any PDC thus far.

Keywords: Seebeck coefficient; SiOC; free carbon; h-BN; polymer-derived ceramic; thermoelectric.