Tailoring the phase transition of silver selenide at the atomistic scale

Chen Luo; Zuoyuan Dong; Tao Xu; Xin Yang; Hui Zhang; Hengchang Bi; Chaolun Wang; Litao Sun; Junhao Chu; Xing Wu

doi:10.1039/d2nr04248g

Tailoring the phase transition of silver selenide at the atomistic scale

Nanoscale. 2022 Nov 10;14(43):16077-16084. doi: 10.1039/d2nr04248g.

Authors

Chen Luo^{1

2}, Zuoyuan Dong¹, Tao Xu³, Xin Yang¹, Hui Zhang³, Hengchang Bi¹, Chaolun Wang¹, Litao Sun³, Junhao Chu^{1

2}, Xing Wu¹

Affiliations

¹ Shanghai Key Laboratory of Multidimensional Information Processing, School of Communication and Electronic Engineering, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China. xwu@cee.ecnu.edu.cn.
² Institute of Optoelectronics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China.
³ SEU-FEI Nano-Pico Center, Key Laboratory of MEMS of Ministry of Education, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China.

PMID: 36124640
DOI: 10.1039/d2nr04248g

Abstract

Thermoelectric materials provide promising solutions for energy harvesting from the environment. Silver selenide (Ag₂Se) material attracts much attention due to its excellent thermoelectric properties under superionic phase transition. However, the optimal thermoelectric figure of merit occurs during the phase transition at high temperatures, making low-temperature devices unable to benefit from their best thermoelectric performance. Here, we tailored the phase transition process of Ag₂Se materials with various sizes, and probed the phase transition temperature by in situ transmission electron microscopy. By tuning the motion of the atoms near the surface using size-dependent surface energy, the phase transition-induced process is tailored towards low temperatures. This work paves the way for future phase transition engineering to enhance thermoelectric performance.