In-situ resonant band engineering of solution-processed semiconductors generates high performance n-type thermoelectric nano-inks

Sahu, Ayaskanta; Russ, Boris; Liu, Miao; Yang, Fan; Zaia, Edmond W.; Gordon, Madeleine P.; Forster, Jason D.; Zhang, Ya-Qian; Scott, Mary C.; Persson, Kristin A.; Coates, Nelson E.; Segalman, Rachel A.; Urban, Jeffrey J.

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-15933-2

Title: In-situ resonant band engineering of solution-processed semiconductors generates high performance n-type thermoelectric nano-inks

Journal Article · Wed Apr 29 00:00:00 EDT 2020 · Nature Communications

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-15933-2· OSTI ID:1616987

^[1]; Russ, Boris ^[2];

^[3]; Yang, Fan ^[4]; Zaia, Edmond W. ^[2]; Gordon, Madeleine P. ^[2];

^[5]; Zhang, Ya-Qian ^[6]; Scott, Mary C. ^[6];

^[5]; Coates, Nelson E. ^[7];

^[8];

^[5]

New York Univ., Brooklyn, NY (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Stevens Inst. of Technology, Hoboken, NJ (United States); Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of Portland, OR (United States)
Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)

Thermoelectric devices possess enormous potential to reshape the global energy landscape by converting waste heat into electricity, yet their commercial implementation has been limited by their high cost to output power ratio. No single “champion” thermoelectric material exists due to a broad range of material-dependent thermal and electrical property optimization challenges. While the advent of nanostructuring provided a general design paradigm for reducing material thermal conductivities, there exists no analogous strategy for homogeneous, precise doping of materials. Here, we demonstrate a nanoscale interface-engineering approach that harnesses the large chemically accessible surface areas of nanomaterials to yield massive, finely-controlled, and stable changes in the Seebeck coefficient, switching a poor nonconventional p-type thermoelectric material, tellurium, into a robust n-type material exhibiting stable properties over months of testing. These remodeled, n-type nanowires display extremely high power factors (~500 µW m^-1K^-2) that are orders of magnitude higher than their bulk p-type counterparts.

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Research Organization:: Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Scientific User Facilities Division; US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231; FA9550-11-C-0028

OSTI ID:: 1616987

Journal Information:: Nature Communications, Vol. 11, Issue 1; ISSN 2041-1723

Publisher:: Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 15 works

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