Elemental Diffusion and Service Performance of Bi₂Te₃-Based Thermoelectric Generation Modules with Flexible Connection Electrodes

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• 作者：Chengpeng Jiang ; Xi’an Fan ; Zhenzhou Rong…
• 关键词：Thermoelectric generation ; thermoelectric properties ; Bi2Te3 ; elements diffusion ; service performance
• 刊名：Journal of Electronic Materials
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：February 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：46
• 期：2
• 页码：1363-1370
• 全文大小：
• 刊物类别：Chemistry and Materials Science
• 刊物主题：Optical and Electronic Materials; Characterization and Evaluation of Materials; Electronics and Microelectronics, Instrumentation; Solid State Physics;
• 出版者：Springer US
• ISSN：1543-186X
• 卷排序：46

文摘

In this work, the elemental diffusion and service performance of Bi₂Te₃-based thermoelectric generation (TEG) modules with flexible Al electrodes were evaluated at a temperature difference of 240°C and a cold junction temperature of 50°C. The results indicated that while the maximum output power (P_max) and open circuit voltage (U₀) first increased rapidly and then decreased gradually with service time, the dynamic inner-resistance (R_i) showed the opposite trend. Obvious defects and elemental diffusion across the interfaces were observed and resulted in the performance degradation of the TEG modules. The Ni barrier layer with a thickness of 8–10 μm could not effectively restrain the elemental diffusion for the TEG applications at the high operating temperatures. Al was not suitable as the electrode material for the Bi₂Te₃-based TEG modules due to its ready absorption of Se from the n-type thermoelectric legs. Encouragingly, we found that the Al electrode could restrain the diffusion of the other elements such as Bi, Te, Sb, Cu, Ni, and I. These results provided insight into the improvement of the service performance of the TEG modules.