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Title: Thermochemically evolved nanoplatelets of bismuth selenide with enhanced thermoelectric figure of merit

Journal Article · · AIP Advances
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4902159· OSTI ID:22420168
; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;  [1];  [2]
  1. Research Centre of Materials Science, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081 (China)
  2. State Key Laboratory of New Ceramics and Fine Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084 (China)

We firstly present a simple thermochemical method to fabricate high-quality Bi{sub 2}Se{sub 3} nanoplatelets with enhanced figure of merit using elemental bismuth and selenium powders as precursors. The crystal structure of as synthesized products is characterized via X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) measurements. Morphological and chemical synthetic parameters are investigated through a series of experiments; thickness and composition of the platelets are well controlled in large scale production. Subsequently spark plasma sintering (SPS) is performed to fabricate n-type nanostructured bulk thermoelectric materials. Raman Spectroscopy of the two selected samples with approximately of 50 and 100 nm thicknesses shows three vibrational modes. The lower thickness sample exhibits the maximum red shift of about 2.17 cm{sup -1} and maximum broadening of about 10 cm{sup -1} by in-plane vibrational mode E{sup 2}{sub g}. The enhanced value of figure of merit ∼0.41 is obtained for pure phase bismuth selenide to the best of our knowledge. We observe metallic conduction behavior while semiconducting behavior for nanostructured bismuth selenide is reported elsewhere which could be due to different synthetic techniques adopted. These results clearly suggest that our adopted synthetic technique has profound effect on the electronic and thermoelectric transport properties of this material.

OSTI ID:
22420168
Journal Information:
AIP Advances, Vol. 4, Issue 11; Other Information: (c) 2014 Author(s); Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2158-3226
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English