Semiconductor glass with superior flexibility and high room temperature thermoelectric performance

Shiyang He; Yongbo Li; Lu Liu; Ying Jiang; Jingjing Feng; Wei Zhu; Jiye Zhang; Zirui Dong; Yuan Deng; Jun Luo; Wenqing Zhang; Gang Chen

doi:10.1126/sciadv.aaz8423

Semiconductor glass with superior flexibility and high room temperature thermoelectric performance

Sci Adv. 2020 Apr 10;6(15):eaaz8423. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aaz8423. eCollection 2020 Apr.

Authors

Shiyang He¹, Yongbo Li¹, Lu Liu², Ying Jiang², Jingjing Feng³, Wei Zhu^{3

4}, Jiye Zhang¹, Zirui Dong¹, Yuan Deng^{3

4}, Jun Luo^{1

2}, Wenqing Zhang⁵, Gang Chen⁶

Affiliations

¹ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China.
² Materials Genome Institute, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China.
³ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100083, China.
⁴ Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Biomedical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100083, China.
⁵ Department of Physics, Shenzhen Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering, and Guangdong Provincial Key-Lab for Computational Science and Materials Design, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China.
⁶ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Abstract

Most crystalline inorganic materials, except for metals and some layer materials, exhibit bad flexibility because of strong ionic or covalent bonds, while amorphous materials usually display poor electrical properties due to structural disorders. Here, we report the simultaneous realization of extraordinary room temperature flexibility and thermoelectric performance in Ag₂Te_1-x S _x -based materials through amorphization. The coexistence of amorphous main phase and crystallites results in exceptional flexibility and ultralow lattice thermal conductivity. Furthermore, the flexible Ag₂Te_0.6S_0.4 glass exhibits a degenerate semiconductor behavior with a room temperature Hall mobility of ~750 cm² V^-1 s^-1 at a carrier concentration of 8.6 × 10¹⁸ cm^-3, which is at least an order of magnitude higher than other amorphous materials, leading to a thermoelectric power factor also an order of magnitude higher than the best amorphous thermoelectric materials known. The in-plane prototype uni-leg thermoelectric generator made from this material demonstrates its potential for flexible thermoelectric device.

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