Pei, Yanzhong and Heinz, Nicholas A. and LaLonde, Aaron and Snyder, G. Jeffrey (2011) Combination of large nanostructures and complex band structure for high performance thermoelectric lead telluride. Energy and Environmental Science, 4 (9). pp. 3640-3645. ISSN 1754-5692. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20110929-064323922
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Abstract
The complexity of the valence band structure in p-type PbTe has been shown to enable a significant enhancement of the average thermoelectric figure of merit (zT) when heavily doped with Na. It has also been shown that when PbTe is nanostructured with large nanometer sized Ag_2Te precipitates there is an enhancement of zT due to phonon scattering at the interfaces. The enhancement in zT resulting from these two mechanisms is of similar magnitude but, in principle, decoupled from one another. This work experimentally demonstrates a successful combination of the complexity in the valence band structure with the addition of nanostructuring to create a high performance thermoelectric material. These effects lead to a high zT over a wide temperature range with peak zT > 1.5 at T > 650 K in Na-doped PbTe/Ag_2Te. This high average zT produces 30% higher efficiency (300–750 K) than pure Na-doped PbTe because of the nanostructures, while the complex valence band structure leads to twice the efficiency as the related n-type La-doped PbTe/Ag_2Te without such band structure complexity.
Item Type: | Article | |||||||||
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Additional Information: | © 2011 The Royal Society of Chemistry. Received 9th June 2011, Accepted 11th July 2011. First published on the web 29 Jul 2011. The authors gratefully acknowledge NASA-JPL and DARPA for funding support of this work. | |||||||||
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Issue or Number: | 9 | |||||||||
Record Number: | CaltechAUTHORS:20110929-064323922 | |||||||||
Persistent URL: | https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20110929-064323922 | |||||||||
Official Citation: | Combination of large nanostructures and complex band structure for high performance thermoelectric lead telluride Yanzhong Pei, Nicholas A. Heinz, Aaron LaLonde and G. Jeffrey Snyder Energy Environ. Sci., 2011, 4, 3640-3645 DOI: 10.1039/C1EE01928G | |||||||||
Usage Policy: | No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided. | |||||||||
ID Code: | 25480 | |||||||||
Collection: | CaltechAUTHORS | |||||||||
Deposited By: | Ruth Sustaita | |||||||||
Deposited On: | 29 Sep 2011 16:43 | |||||||||
Last Modified: | 03 Mar 2020 13:01 |
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