Low lattice thermal conductivity and enhanced thermoelectric performance of SnTe via chemical electroless plating of Ag

• 作者: Bang-Zhou Tian Xu-Ping Jiang Jie Chen Han Gao Ze-Gao Wang Jun Tang Da-Li Zhou Lei Yang Zhi-Gang Chen
• 来源期刊: 稀有金属（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2022,（1）
• 所属期刊栏目: RARE METALS(Monthly)
• 页码范围: 86-95
• 页数: 10页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

Interface engineering has been regarded as an effective strategy to manipulate the thermoelectric perfor-mance of materials.Here,we use a facile chemical elec-troless plating and a spark plasma sintering process to fabricate Ag-plated SnTe bulk.After sintering,a small amount of plated Ag can be doped into SnTe to suppress the Sn vacancies and the others form Ag precipitates with a size distribution from nanoscale to microscale,which introduces Ag/SnTe interfaces to enhance the Seebeck coefficient via energy filtering effect.Simultaneously,these structures result in strong scattering to reach a low lattice thermal conductivity of ～ 0.62 W·m-1·K-1.Con-sequently,a maximum figure of merit (zT) of ～ 0.67 at 823 K is achieved in 2 wt％ Ag-plated SnTe,which is ～60％ higher than that of pristine SnTe.Moreover,the microhardness indentation test results show that the mean microhardness of 2 wt％ Ag-plated SnTe is HV 64.26,which is much higher than that of pristine SnTe,indicating that Ag electroless plating can improve the mechanical properties of SnTe.This work has provided a facile and eco-friendly method to realize the interface engineering for manipulating the thermoelectric and mechanical properties of SnTe.