Investigation of microstructure and thermoelectric properties of p‐type BiSbTe/ZnO composites

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  • Babu Madavali
    Division of Advanced Materials Engineering & Institute for Rare Metals Kongju National University Cheonan Korea
  • Chul‐Hee Lee
    Division of Advanced Materials Engineering & Institute for Rare Metals Kongju National University Cheonan Korea
  • Hyo‐Seob Kim
    208 Metals Development Ames Laboratory Iowa State University Ames Iowa
  • Kap‐Ho Lee
    Department of Materials Science & Engineering Chungnam National University Daejeon South Korea
  • Soon‐Jik Hong
    Division of Advanced Materials Engineering & Institute for Rare Metals Kongju National University Cheonan Korea

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<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>In this research work, p‐type BiSbTe/ZnO (2 wt%) nanocomposite powders were fabricated by high‐energy ball milling at different milling times, and subsequently, powders were consolidated by spark plasma sintering at 673 K temperature. The existence of nanoinclusions was confirmed by <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">SEM</jats:styled-content>‐<jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">EDS</jats:styled-content> mapping. Vickers hardness values greatly improved due to reduction in grain size which prevents the crack propagation and dispersion strengthening mechanism. The decrease in carrier density, which plays a critical role in thermoelectrics, dramatically increases the Seebeck coefficient, and subsequently, decreases the electrical conductivity upon the dispersion of ZnO nanorods into the BiSbTe matrix. The thermal conductivity <jats:styled-content>was</jats:styled-content> noticeably reduced by ~13% in BiSbTe/ZnO composites for 5‐minute samples due to blocking of carriers/phonons at interfaces, and/or grain boundaries. The peak <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">ZT</jats:styled-content> of 0.92 was obtained for BiSbTe matrix, and 0.91 for BiSbTe/ZnO (5 minutes) composites at room temperatures.</jats:p>

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