DOI: 10.1126/science.1156446. High-Thermoelectric Performance of Nanostructured Bismuth Antimony Telluride Bulk Alloys

High-Thermoelectric Performance of Nanostructured Bismuth Antimony Telluride Bulk Alloys

10.1126/science.1156446

Crossref journal-article

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Science (221)

Abstract

The dimensionless thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT) in bismuth antimony telluride (BiSbTe) bulk alloys has remained around 1 for more than 50 years. We show that a peak ZT of 1.4 at 100°C can be achieved in a p-type nanocrystalline BiSbTe bulk alloy. These nanocrystalline bulk materials were made by hot pressing nanopowders that were ball-milled from crystalline ingots under inert conditions. Electrical transport measurements, coupled with microstructure studies and modeling, show that the ZT improvement is the result of low thermal conductivity caused by the increased phonon scattering by grain boundaries and defects. More importantly, ZT is about 1.2 at room temperature and 0.8 at 250°C, which makes these materials useful for cooling and power generation. Cooling devices that use these materials have produced high-temperature differences of 86°, 106°, and 119°C with hot-side temperatures set at 50°, 100°, and 150°C, respectively. This discovery sets the stage for use of a new nanocomposite approach in developing high-performance low-cost bulk thermoelectric materials.

Bibliography

Poudel, B., Hao, Q., Ma, Y., Lan, Y., Minnich, A., Yu, B., Yan, X., Wang, D., Muto, A., Vashaee, D., Chen, X., Liu, J., Dresselhaus, M. S., Chen, G., & Ren, Z. (2008). High-Thermoelectric Performance of Nanostructured Bismuth Antimony Telluride Bulk Alloys. Science, 320(5876), 634â638.

Authors 15

Bed Poudel (first)
Qing Hao (additional)
Yi Ma (additional)
Yucheng Lan (additional)
Austin Minnich (additional)
Bo Yu (additional)
Xiao Yan (additional)
Dezhi Wang (additional)
Andrew Muto (additional)
Daryoosh Vashaee (additional)
Xiaoyuan Chen (additional)
Junming Liu (additional)
Mildred S. Dresselhaus (additional)
Gang Chen (additional)
Zhifeng Ren (additional)

References 16 Referenced 5,078

D. M. Rowe Ed. CRC Handbook of Thermoelectrics (CRC Boca Raton FL 1995).
H. J. Goldsmid Thermoelectric Refrigeration (Plenum New York 1964). (10.1007/978-1-4899-5723-8)
T. M. Tritt Ed. Semiconductors and Semimetals Recent Trends in Thermoelectric Materials Research: Part One to Three (Academic San Diego CA 2001) vol. 69 to 71.
10.1038/35098012
10.1126/science.1072886
10.1126/science.1092963
J. P. Fluerial, T. Caillat, A. Borshchevsky, in Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Thermoelectrics, Kansas City, MO, 30August to 1 September 1994 (AIP, New York, 1995), pp. 40–44. / Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Thermoelectrics (1995)
10.1103/PhysRevB.57.14958
10.1002/adma.200600527
10.1063/1.1863440
10.1063/1.2425007
Bulk p-type BiSbTe alloy ingots were loaded into a jar with balls inside the argon-filled glove box to avoid oxidation of the nanopowder. The jar was loaded into a ball mill and processed for several hours. When the nanopowder was ready it was loaded into 1.25- to 2.5-cm (inner diameter) dies and compacted into a 100% dense solid NC bulk sample by a hot press. Samples are available for testing upon request.
We cut hot-pressed NC bulk pellets into blocks (2 mm by 3 mm by 1 mm) that were ground down into smaller blocks (2 mm by 3 mm by 0.002 mm) using a mechanical tripod polisher. We then glued the sample to a copper grid and milled it using a precision ion polishing system (Gatan Inc. Warrendale Pennsylvania USA) for 30 min with incident energy of 3.2 kV and beam current of 15 μA at an incident angle of 3.5°.
T. C. Harman, S. E. Miller, H. L. Goeing, Bull. Am. Phys. Soc.30, 35 (1955). / Bull. Am. Phys. Soc. (1955)
10.1103/PhysRevB.68.205207
The work is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) grant no. DE-FG02-00ER45805 (Z.F.R.) DOE grant no. DE-FG02-02ER45977 (G.C.) NSF–Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Team grant no. 0506830 (G.C. Z.F.R. and M.S.D.) National Science Foundation of China project no. 50528203 (J.M.L. and Z.F.R.) and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China project no. 2006CB921802 (J.M.L.). G.C. and Z.F.R. are cofounders of GMZ Energy Inc.

Dates

Type	When
Created	17 years, 5 months ago (March 20, 2008, 9:43 p.m.)
Deposited	1 year, 7 months ago (Jan. 10, 2024, 3:55 a.m.)
Indexed	11 hours, 14 minutes ago (Aug. 23, 2025, 9:49 p.m.)
Issued	17 years, 3 months ago (May 2, 2008)
Published	17 years, 3 months ago (May 2, 2008)
Published Print	17 years, 3 months ago (May 2, 2008)

Funders 0

None

BibTeX

@article{Poudel_2008, title={High-Thermoelectric Performance of Nanostructured Bismuth Antimony Telluride Bulk Alloys}, volume={320}, ISSN={1095-9203}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1156446}, DOI={10.1126/science.1156446}, number={5876}, journal={Science}, publisher={American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)}, author={Poudel, Bed and Hao, Qing and Ma, Yi and Lan, Yucheng and Minnich, Austin and Yu, Bo and Yan, Xiao and Wang, Dezhi and Muto, Andrew and Vashaee, Daryoosh and Chen, Xiaoyuan and Liu, Junming and Dresselhaus, Mildred S. and Chen, Gang and Ren, Zhifeng}, year={2008}, month=may, pages={634–638} }

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