Magnetism-induced huge enhancement of the room-temperature thermoelectric and cooling performance of p-type BiSbTe alloys. Issue 2 (18th December 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Li, Cuncheng; Ma, Shifang; Wei, Ping; Zhu, Wanting; Nie, Xiaolei; Sang, Xiahan; Sun, Zhigang; Zhang, Qingjie; Zhao, Wenyu
• Is Part Of: Energy & environmental science. Volume 13:Issue 2(2020)
• Page Start: 535
• Page End: 544
• Publication Date: 2019-12-18
• Subjects: Energy conversion -- Periodicals; Fuel switching -- Periodicals; Environmental sciences -- Periodicals; Environmental chemistry -- Periodicals; 333.79
• DOI: 10.1039/c9ee03446c
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1754-5692

Abstract

Abstract : Superparamagnetic Fe3 O4 nanoparticles remarkably enhance the room-temperature thermoelectric and cooling performance of BiSbTe alloys. Abstract : Bi2 Te3 -Based alloys are the only thermoelectric material for commercial applications while their low performance is extremely difficult to improve. Herein, superparamagnetic Fe3 O4 nanoparticles (Fe3 O4 -NPs) are incorporated into a commercial p-type Bi0.5 Sb1.5 Te3 matrix to improve the thermoelectric and cooling performance near room temperature. It is discovered that the Seebeck coefficient of the Fe3 O4 /Bi0.5 Sb1.5 Te3 nanocomposites remarkably increased while the thermal conductivity significantly decreased because of the carrier multiple scattering and the enhanced phonon scattering induced by the Fe3 O4 -NPs, respectively. The maximum ZT reaches 1.5 at 340 K for the nanocomposite with 0.15 wt% of Fe3 O4 -NPs, being 32% higher than that of the matrix. At near room temperature, the huge cooling temperature difference reaches 5.4 K for a single-leg device made with the nanocomposite, increased by about 3 times as compared with the 1.8 K of the device made with the Bi0.5 Sb1.5 Te3 matrix. This work reveals that introducing superparamagnetic nanoparticles is a universal approach to simultaneously enhance the thermoelectric and cooling performance of p-type BiSbTe-based alloys.