Abstract
There have been few demonstrations that grain boundary engineering results in higher power generation efficiencies despite serious interest in using the strategy to improve zT. Using both Yb2O3 nanoprecipitates that decorate grain boundaries and carbon nanotubes to further reduce thermal conductivity and improve mechanical strength, a maximum zT of 1.43 at 875 K and a device ZT of approximately 1.0 in Yb-filled CoSb3-based nanocomposites are achieved. The preparation procedure of these materials is repeatable in mass production. Thermoelectric power generation modules based on these high-performance materials demonstrate a thermoelectric conversion efficiency of 9.3% under a temperature difference of 558 K. The results highlight nanostructured grain boundary engineering as a strategy to improve conventional thermoelectric materials, and the realistic prospect of large-scale thermoelectric power generation using skutterudite-based nanocomposites is demonstrated.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 501-510 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Nano Energy |
| Volume | 41 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 2017 |
Funding
This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51374078 , 51432004 ), Shanghai Committee of Science and Technology (No. 16JC1401800 ), the Opening Project of State Key Laboratory of High Performance Ceramics and Superfine Microstructure ( SKL201507SIC ), PCSIRT (No. IRT1221 ), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and DHU Distinguished Young Professor Program . Additionally, M.D. would like to acknowledge funding from NSF DMR program Grant nos. 1334713 and 1333335 . The contributions of M.T.A. are supported as part of the Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center (S3TEC) an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (BES) , under Award # DE-SC0001299 / DE-FG02-09ER46577 . Yanzhong Pei is a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Tongji University. He received a B.S. from Central South University in 2003, and then went on to pursue a Ph.D in Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences under the advisory of Prof. Lidong Chen. After graduation, he spent a year at Michigan State University as research associate with Prof. Donald. Morelli and then worked as a senior postdoctoral fellow at Caltech working with Dr. G. Jeffrey Snyder. He has gained multiple talent supporting programs including the National Recruitment Program of Global Youth Experts (1000 Plan) and National Natural Science Foundation of China. He is the first one to win the Goldsmid Award (2007) and Young Investigator Award (2013) in the thermoelectric field. His interests are focused on the design and characterization of new thermoelectric materials for waste heat recovery applications. Now he has published numerous papers on the top-tier journals such as Nature , Nature Commun , PNAS , Energy Environ Sci , Adv Mater , Adv Funct Mater , Adv Energy Mater, NPG Asia Mater.
Keywords
- Grain boundary engineering
- Nanocomposites
- Power generation
- Skutterudites
- Thermoelectric
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
- General Materials Science
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering
