Achievement of Excellent Thermoelectric Properties in Cu-Se-S Compounds via In Situ Phase Separation

Yi-Xin Zhang; Yun-Qiao Tang; Zheng Ma; Ming-Yu Hu; Jing Feng; Zhen-Hua Ge

doi:10.1021/acs.inorgchem.1c01631

Achievement of Excellent Thermoelectric Properties in Cu-Se-S Compounds via In Situ Phase Separation

Inorg Chem. 2021 Sep 6;60(17):13269-13277. doi: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.1c01631. Epub 2021 Aug 17.

Authors

Yi-Xin Zhang¹, Yun-Qiao Tang¹, Zheng Ma², Ming-Yu Hu^{1

3}, Jing Feng¹, Zhen-Hua Ge¹

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650093, China.
² Ernst Ruska-Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons and Peter Grünberg Institute, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany.
³ School of Chemical Biology and Biotechnology, Shenzhen Graduate School, Peking University, Shenzhen 518055, China.

PMID: 34404212
DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.1c01631

Abstract

In this study, Cu₂Se_1-xS_x (x = 0.1, 0.3, and 0.5) alloy powders were prepared by the hydrothermal synthesis method. In the subsequent sintering process, the spontaneous in situ phase separation process of the sample forms a two-phase hybrid structure. The generated Cu₂S precipitates in the Cu₂Se matrix noticeably enhance phonon scattering, which is beneficial for low thermal conductivity without significantly affecting the electrical transport performance. Ultimately, an optimized thermoelectric performance was obtained in Cu₂Se_0.9S_0.1, reaching a peak zT value of 1.43 at 773 K, the optimum value among the Cu-Se-S systems at this temperature.