Neutron diffraction and thermoelectric properties of indium filled In _x Co ₄ Sb ₁₂ ( x=0.05, 0.2) and indium cerium filled Ce _0.05 In _0.1 Co ₄ Sb ₁₂ skutterudites: Neutron diffraction and thermoelectric properties of In/Ce skutterudites

Journal Article · Fri Sep 25 00:00:00 EDT 2015 · Physica Status Solidi. A, Applications and Materials Science

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/pssa.201532589· OSTI ID:1261323

Sesselmann, Andreas ^[1]; Klobes, Benedikt ^[2]; Dasgupta, Titas ^[3]; Gourdon, Olivier ^[4]; Hermann, Raphael ^[5]; Mueller, Eckhard ^[6]

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1. German Aerospace Center (DLR), Koln (Germany)
2. Julich Center for Neutron Science JCNS (Germany). Peter Grunberg Inst. PGI
3. Indian Inst. of Technology (IIT), Mumbai (India)
4. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
5. Julich Center for Neutron Science JCNS (Germany). Peter Grunberg Inst. PGI; Univ. of Liege, (Belgium); Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
6. German Aerospace Center (DLR), Koln (Germany); Justus Liebig Univ., Giessen (Germany)

The thermoelectric properties on polycrystalline single (In) and double filled (Ce, In) skutterudites are characterized between 300 and 700 K. Powder neutron diffraction measurements of the skutterudite compositions In_xCo₄Sb₁₂ (x= 0.05, 0.2) and Ce_0.05In_0.1Co₄Sb₁₂ as a function of temperature (12- 300 K) were carried out, which gives more insight into the structural data of single and double-filled skutterudites. Our results show that due to the annealing treatment, a Sb deficiency is detectable and thus verifies defects at the Sb lattice site of the skutterudite. Furthermore, we show by electron microprobe analysis that a considerable amount of indium is lost during synthesis and post-processing for the single indium filled samples, but not for the double cerium and indium skutterudite sample. The double-filled skutterudite is superior to the single-filled skutterudite composition due to a higher charge carrier density, a comparable lattice thermal resistivity, and a higher density of states effective mass in our experiment. Finally, we obtained a significantly higher Einstein temperature for the double-filled skutterudite composition in comparison to the single-filled species, which reflects the high sensitivity due to filling of the void lattice position within the skutterudite crystal.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Spallation Neutron Source (SNS)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
• Grant/Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1261323
• Journal Information: Physica Status Solidi. A, Applications and Materials Science, Vol. 213, Issue 3; ISSN 1862-6300
• Publisher: Wiley
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
neutron diffraction
Sb deficiency
skutterudites
thermoelectrics