Topotactic anion-exchange in thermoelectric nanostructured layered tin chalcogenides with reduced selenium content

Guang Han; Srinivas R Popuri; Heather F Greer; Ruizhi Zhang; Lourdes Ferre-Llin; Jan-Willem G Bos; Wuzong Zhou; Michael J Reece; Douglas J Paul; Andrew R Knox; Duncan H Gregory

doi:10.1039/c7sc05190e

Topotactic anion-exchange in thermoelectric nanostructured layered tin chalcogenides with reduced selenium content

Chem Sci. 2018 Mar 23;9(15):3828-3836. doi: 10.1039/c7sc05190e. eCollection 2018 Apr 21.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ WestCHEM , School of Chemistry , University of Glasgow , Glasgow , G12 8QQ , UK . Email: Duncan.Gregory@glasgow.ac.uk.
² Institute of Chemical Sciences , Centre for Advanced Energy Storage and Recovery , School of Engineering and Physical Sciences , Heriot-Watt University , Edinburgh , EH14 4AS , UK.
³ EaStCHEM , School of Chemistry , University of St Andrews , St Andrews , Fife KY16 9ST , UK.
⁴ School of Engineering & Materials Science , Queen Mary University of London , London , E1 4NS , UK.
⁵ School of Engineering , University of Glasgow , Glasgow , G12 8LT , UK.

Abstract

Anion exchange has been performed with nanoplates of tin sulfide (SnS) via "soft chemical" organic-free solution syntheses to yield layered pseudo-ternary tin chalcogenides on a 10 g-scale. SnS undergoes a topotactic transformation to form a series of S-substituted tin selenide (SnSe) nano/micro-plates with tuneable chalcogenide composition. SnS_0.1Se_0.9 nanoplates were spark plasma sintered into phase-pure, textured, dense pellets, the ZT of which has been significantly enhanced to ≈1.16 from ≈0.74 at 923 K via microstructure texturing control. These approaches provide versatile, scalable and low-cost routes to p-type layered tin chalcogenides with controllable composition and competitive thermoelectric performance.