Large Thermoelectric Figure-of-Merits from SiGe Nanowires by Simultaneously Measuring Electrical and Thermal Transport Properties

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• 作者：Eun Kyung Lee ; Liang Yin ; Yongjin Lee ; Jong Woon Lee ; Sang Jin Lee ; Junho Lee ; Seung Nam Cha ; Dongmok Whang ; Gyeong S. Hwang ; Kedar Hippalgaonkar ; Arun Majumdar ; Choongho Yu ; Byoung Lyong Choi ; Jong Min Kim ; Kinam Kim
• 刊名：Nano Letters
• 出版年：2012
• 出版时间：June 13, 2012
• 年：2012
• 卷：12
• 期：6
• 页码：2918-2923
• 全文大小：316K
• 年卷期：v.12,no.6(June 13, 2012)
• ISSN：1530-6992

文摘

The strongly correlated thermoelectric properties have been a major hurdle for high-performance thermoelectric energy conversion. One possible approach to avoid such correlation is to suppress phonon transport by scattering at the surface of confined nanowire structures. However, phonon characteristic lengths are broad in crystalline solids, which makes nanowires insufficient to fully suppress heat transport. Here, we employed Si鈥揋e alloy as well as nanowire structures to maximize the depletion of heat-carrying phonons. This results in a thermal conductivity as low as 1.2 W/m-K at 450 K, showing a large thermoelectric figure-of-merit (ZT) of 0.46 compared with those of SiGe bulks and even ZT over 2 at 800 K theoretically. All thermoelectric properties were 鈥渟imultaneously鈥?measured from the same nanowires to facilitate accurate ZT measurements. The surface-boundary scattering is prominent when the nanowire diameter is over 100 nm, whereas alloying plays a more important role in suppressing phonon transport for smaller ones.

Keywords:

Simultaneous measurement; thermal conductivity reduction; alloy scattering; boundary scattering