Enhancing Thermoelectric Performance of n-Type Bi2Te2.7Se0.3 through Incorporation of Amorphous Si3N4 Nanoparticles

Tao Chen; Shujin Li; Ke Chen; Mazhar Hussain Danish; Hui Liu; Di Li; Hongxing Xin; Yongsheng Zhang; Jian Zhang; Xiaoying Qin

doi:10.1021/acsami.4c02652

Enhancing Thermoelectric Performance of n-Type Bi₂Te_2.7Se_0.3 through Incorporation of Amorphous Si₃N₄ Nanoparticles

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2024 May 1;16(17):22016-22024. doi: 10.1021/acsami.4c02652. Epub 2024 Apr 22.

Authors

Tao Chen^{1

2}, Shujin Li^{1

2}, Ke Chen^{1

2}, Mazhar Hussain Danish^{1

2}, Hui Liu³, Di Li^{1

2}, Hongxing Xin¹, Yongsheng Zhang⁴, Jian Zhang^{1

2}, Xiaoying Qin^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Key Lab of Photovoltaic and Energy Conservation Materials, Institute of Solid State Physics, HFIPS, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China.
² University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, P. R. China.
³ College of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 210009, China.
⁴ Advanced Research Institute of Multidisciplinary Sciences, Qufu Normal University, Qufu, Shandong 273165, China.

PMID: 38647228
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.4c02652

Abstract

Bi₂Te₃-based thermoelectric (TE) materials are the state-of-the-art compounds for commercial applications near room temperature. Nevertheless, the application of the n-type Bi₂Te_2.7Se_0.3 (BTS) is restricted by the comparatively low figure of merit (ZT) and intrinsic embrittlement. Here, we show that through dispersion of amorphous Si₃N₄ (a-Si₃N₄) nanoparticles both 14% increase in power factor (at 300 K) and 48% decrease in lattice thermal conductivity are simultaneously realized. The increased power factor comes from enhanced thermopower and reduced electrical resistivity while the reduced lattice thermal conductivity originates mainly from scattering of middle- and low-frequency phonons at the incorporated a-Si₃N₄ nanoparticles. As a result, a large ZT_max = 1.19 (at 373 K) and an average ZT_ave ∼ 1.12 (300-473 K) with better mechanical properties are achieved for the BTS/0.25 wt % Si₃N₄ sample. Present results demonstrate that the incorporation of a-Si₃N₄ is a promising way to improve TE performance.

Keywords: bismuth telluride alloy; energy filtering effect; nanoparticles; phonon scattering; thermal conductivity; thermoelectric.