An International Round-Robin Study, Part II: Thermal Diffusivity, Specific Heat and Thermal Conductivity

Journal Article · Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2013 · Journal of Electronic Materials

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-013-2516-0· OSTI ID:1090475

Wang, Hsin ^[1]; Porter, Wallace D ^[1]; Bottner, Harold ^[2]; Konig, Jan ^[2]; Chen, Lidong ^[3]; Bai, Shengqiang ^[3]; Tritt, Terry M. ^[4]; Mayolett, Alex ^[5]; Senawiratne, Jayantha ^[5]; Smith, Charlene ^[5]; Harris, Fred ^[6]; Gilbert, Partricia ^[7]; Sharp, J ^[7]; Lo, Jason ^[8]; Keinke, Holger ^[9]; Kiss, Laszlo I. ^[10]

---

1. ORNL
2. Fraunhofer-Institute, Freiburg, Germany
3. Chinese Academy of Sciences
4. Clemson University
5. Corning, Inc
6. ZT-Plus
7. Marlow Industries, Inc
8. CANMET - Materials Technology Laboratory, Natural Resources of Canada
9. University of Waterloo, Canada
10. University of Quebec at Chicoutimi

For bulk thermoelectrics, figure-of-merit, ZT, still needs to improve from the current value of 1.0 - 1.5 to above 2 to be competitive to other alternative technologies. In recent years, the most significant improvements in ZT were mainly due to successful reduction of thermal conductivity. However, thermal conductivity cannot be measured directly at high temperatures. The combined measurements of thermal diffusivity and specific heat and density are required. It has been shown that thermal conductivity is the property with the greatest uncertainty and has a direct influence on the accuracy of the figure of merit. The International Energy Agency (IEA) group under the implementing agreement for Advanced Materials for Transportation (AMT) has conducted two international round-robins since 2009. This paper is Part II of the international round-robin testing of transport properties of bulk bismuth telluride. The main focuses in Part II are on thermal diffusivity, specific heat and thermal conductivity.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). High Temperature Materials Lab. (HTML)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
• DOE Contract Number: DE-AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1090475
• Journal Information: Journal of Electronic Materials, Vol. 42, Issue 6; ISSN 0361--5235
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

thermal diffusivity
specific heat
thermal conductivity
thermoelectric