Realizing high figure of merit in heavy-band p-type half-Heusler thermoelectric materials

By C. Fu, Sai Bai, Yintu Liu, Yunshan Tang, Lidong Chen, Xinbing Zhao, Ting Zhu. Nature Communications, 2015

1,066 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Solid-state thermoelectric technology offers a promising solution for converting waste heat to useful electrical power. Both high operating temperature and high figure of merit zT are desirable for high-efficiency thermoelectric power generation. Here we report a high zT of ∼1.5 at 1,200 K for the p-type FeNbSb heavy-band half-Heusler alloys. High content of heavier Hf dopant simultaneously optimizes the electrical power factor and suppresses thermal conductivity. Both the enhanced point-defect and electron–phonon scatterings contribute to a significant reduction in the lattice thermal conductivity. An eight couple prototype thermoelectric module exhibits a high conversion efficiency of 6.2% and a high power density of 2.2 W cm−2 at a temperature difference of 655 K. These findings highlight the optimization strategy for heavy-band thermoelectric materials and demonstrate a realistic prospect of high-temperature thermoelectric modules based on half-Heusler alloys with low cost, excellent mechanical robustness and stability. Thermoelectric materials could be used to convert waste heat into useful electricity, but the ideal substance needs to both optimize the electrical power factor and suppress thermal conductivity. Here, the authors report a high figure of merit of 1.5 at 1,200 K in the p-type half-Heusler alloy FeNbSb.

Subfields: Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/565328778d417f2631c97de3b476aea2530ed1b1

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials

1. Xun Shi
2. C. Uher
3. Y. Pei
4. Lidong Chen
5. Jian He
6. David J. Singh
7. T. Tritt

In Materials Chemistry

1. Lidong Chen
2. Xun Shi
3. C. Uher
4. T. Tritt
5. Y. Pei
6. Jian He
7. Zhiwei Chen
8. Siqi Lin

Citations in the corpus

• Advances in thermoelectric materials research: Looking back and moving forward (2017, background): “Cu(In,Ga)Te2 (145,45, 146),CoSb3 (11, 147, 148), InSb (149, 150), andhalf-Heuslercompounds (151, 152, 107).”
• Band and scattering tuning for high performance thermoelectric Sn1−xMnxTe alloys (2015, background): “Demonstrated strategies are typified by the high band degeneracy through band convergence in PbTe [21], Mg2Si [22,23] and half-Heusler [3,24] alloys, and by the resonant doping [20,25e28].”
• On the tuning of electrical and thermal transport in thermoelectrics: an integrated theory–experiment perspective (2016, methodology): “Promising compounds are predicted and several of them are confirmed years later.(47,174) Anharmonic IFC calculations were used by Carrete et al.”