Realization of higher thermoelectric performance by dynamic doping of copper in n-type PbTe

You, Li; Zhang, Jiye; Pan, Shanshan; Jiang, Ying; Wang, Ke; Yang, Jiong; Pei, Yanzhong; Zhu, Qing; Agne, Matthias T.; Snyder, G. Jeffrey; Ren, Zhifeng; Zhang, Wenqing; Luo, Jun

doi:10.1039/c9ee01137d

Realization of higher thermoelectric performance by dynamic doping of copper in n-type PbTe

Journal Article · Mon Aug 19 00:00:00 EDT 2019 · Energy & Environmental Science

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1039/c9ee01137d· OSTI ID:1802188

You, Li ^[1]; ^[2]; Pan, Shanshan ^[2]; Jiang, Ying ^[3]; Wang, Ke ^[3]; ^[3]; ^[4]; Zhu, Qing ^[5]; ^[6]; ^[6]; ^[5]; Zhang, Wenqing ^[7]; ^[8]

Shanghai Univ. (China). School of Materials Science and Engineering; Univ. of Houston, TX (United States). Dept. of Physics. Texas Center for Superconductivity; OSTI
Shanghai Univ. (China). School of Materials Science and Engineering
Shanghai Univ. (China). Materials Genome Inst.
Tongji Univ., Shanghai (China). School of Materials Science and Engineering
Univ. of Houston, TX (United States). Dept. of Physics. Texas Center for Superconductivity
Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL (United States). Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering
Southern Univ. of Science and Technology, Shenzhen (China). Inst. for Quantum Science and Engineering. Dept. of Physics
Shanghai Univ. (China). School of Materials Science and Engineering. Materials Genome Inst.

It is a great challenge to optimize a material's thermoelectric performance due to the strong correlation between its thermoelectric-transport properties, especially the electrical-transport properties. Optimizing the peak zT using a constant carrier concentration is commonly adopted because of the difficulty in realizing the optimum temperature-dependent carrier concentration, but this is not meaningful for real applications, in which the average zT value over the working temperature range is much more important. Here we propose an effective strategy involving the dynamic doping effect of interstitial Cu atoms to fully optimize the electrical-transport properties of n-type PbTe over a wide temperature range. By using Cu intercalation, the temperature-dependent carrier concentration of PbTe is found to well match the theoretically optimal profile. Furthermore, high carrier mobility is largely maintained because the dynamic behavior of the interstitial Cu does not alter the band structure and therefore change the effective mass. Consequently, a peak zT of ~1.3 and a calculated leg efficiency of 12% were achieved for the sample with 0.2 at% Cu. Based on our findings, we further proposed a concept of ‘interstitial engineering’ to reinforce the dynamic doping effect, which is of fundamental importance for optimizing the thermoelectric properties.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Univ. of Houston, TX (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0010831

OSTI ID:: 1802188

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1558677

Journal Information:: Energy & Environmental Science, Journal Name: Energy & Environmental Science Journal Issue: 10 Vol. 12; ISSN 1754-5692

Publisher:: Royal Society of ChemistryCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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