Features and regularities in behavior of thermoelectric properties of rare-earth, transition, and other metals under high pressure up to 20 GPa
- M. N. Miheev Institute of Metal Physics of Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, 18 S. Kovalevskaya Str., Yekaterinburg 620137 (Russian Federation)
We report results of systematic investigations of the thermoelectric properties of a number of rare-earth metals, transition metals, and other metals under high pressure up to 20 GPa at room temperature. We studied an effect of applied pressure on the Seebeck effect of scandium (Sc), yttrium (Y), lanthanum (La), europium (Eu), ytterbium (Yb), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), chromium (Cr), gold (Au), tin (Sn), and CeNi alloy. We found that the high-pressure behavior of the thermopower of three rare-earth metals, namely, Sc, Y, and La, follows a general trend that has been established earlier in lanthanides, and addressed to a s → d electron transfer. Europium and ytterbium, on the contrary, showed a peculiar high-pressure behavior of the thermopower with peaks at near 0.7–1 GPa for Eu and 1.7–2.5 GPa for Yb. Chromium, manganese, and tin demonstrated a gradual and pronounced lowering of the absolute value of the thermopower with pressure. Above 9–11 GPa, the Seebeck coefficients of Mn and Sn were inverted, from n- to p-type for Mn and from p- to n-type for Sn. The Seebeck effect in iron was rather high as ∼16 μV/K and weakly varied with pressure up to ∼11 GPa. Above ∼11 GPa, it started to drop dramatically with pressure to highest pressure achieved 18 GPa. Upon decompression cycle the thermopower of iron returned to the original high values but demonstrated a wide hysteresis loop. We related this behavior in iron to the known bcc (α-Fe) → hcp (ε-Fe) phase transition, and proposed that the thermoelectricity of the α-Fe phase is mainly contributed by the spin Seebeck effect, likewise, the thermoelectricity of the ε-Fe phase—by the conventional diffusion thermopower. We compare the pressure dependencies of the thermopower for different groups of metals and figure out some general trends in the thermoelectricity of metals under applied stress.
- OSTI ID:
- 22493041
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 118, Issue 22; Other Information: (c) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0021-8979
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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