Direct Current Treatment Tuning Crystallinity Leading to High-Performance p-Type Sb2Te3 Flexible Thin Films

Fan Ma; Dongwei Ao; Bing Sun; Wei-Di Liu; Bushra Jabar; Xiangdong Liu

doi:10.1021/acsami.3c06851

Direct Current Treatment Tuning Crystallinity Leading to High-Performance p-Type Sb₂Te₃ Flexible Thin Films

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2023 Aug 9;15(31):37668-37674. doi: 10.1021/acsami.3c06851. Epub 2023 Jul 20.

Authors

Fan Ma¹, Dongwei Ao^{2

3}, Bing Sun², Wei-Di Liu⁴, Bushra Jabar⁵, Xiangdong Liu¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Inner Mongolia University of Technology, Hohhot 010051, China.
² School of Machinery and Automation, Weifang University, Weifang 261061, China.
³ College of Chemical Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China.
⁴ Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Brisbane 4072, Queensland, Australia.
⁵ Institute for Metallic Materials, Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden (IFW Dresden), Dresden 01069, Germany.

PMID: 37474529
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.3c06851

Abstract

With the development of wearable electronics, inorganic flexible thin films (f-TFs) with high thermoelectric performance have attracted increasing research interest. To further enhance the thermoelectric performance of p-type inorganic Sb₂Te₃-based f-TFs, we employed direct current treatment to tune the crystallinity by rationally tuning the direct current treatment time. Correspondingly, a high electrical conductivity of >845 S cm^-1 and a moderate Seebeck coefficient of >110 μV K^-1 within the entire measurement temperature range have been simultaneously achieved. Consequently, a high power factor of 12.84 μW cm^-1 K^-2 at 423 K has been realized in the as-prepared p-type Sb₂Te₃ f-TF treated by a direct current of 5 A for 4 min. A flexible thermoelectric device has been further assembled to demonstrate the power-generating capacity. This study indicates that the direct current treatment is an effective method to improve the thermoelectric performance of Sb₂Te₃ f-TFs.

Keywords: Sb2Te3; direct current treatment; flexible device; thermoelectric; thin film.