Rational Synthesis of Ultrathin n-Type Bi2Te3 Nanowires with Enhanced Thermoelectric Properties

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• 作者：Genqiang Zhang ; Benjamin Kirk ; Luis A. Jauregui ; Haoran Yang ; Xianfan Xu ; Yong P. Chen ; Yue Wu
• 刊名：Nano Letters
• 出版年：2012
• 出版时间：January 11, 2012
• 年：2012
• 卷：12
• 期：1
• 页码：56-60
• 全文大小：351K
• 年卷期：v.12,no.1(January 11, 2012)
• ISSN：1530-6992

文摘

A rational yet scalable solution phase method has been established, for the first time, to obtain n-type Bi₂Te₃ ultrathin nanowires with an average diameter of 8 nm in high yield (up to 93%). Thermoelectric properties of bulk pellets fabricated by compressing the nanowire powder through spark plasma sintering have been investigated. Compared to the current commercial n-type Bi₂Te₃-based bulk materials, our nanowire devices exhibit an enhanced ZT of 0.96 peaked at 380 K due to a significant reduction of thermal conductivity derived from phonon scattering at the nanoscale interfaces in the bulk pellets, which corresponds to a 13% enhancement compared to that of the best n-type commercial Bi₂Te_2.7Se_0.3 single crystals (0.85) and is comparable to the best reported result of n-type Bi₂Te_2.7Se_0.3 sample (ZT = 1.04) fabricated by the hot pressing of ball-milled powder. The uniformity and high yield of the nanowires provide a promising route to make significant contributions to the manufacture of nanotechnology-based thermoelectric power generation and solid-state cooling devices with superior performance in a reliable and a reproducible way.

Keywords:

Bi₂Te₃; nanowires; thermoelectric; spark plasma sintering