Abstract
Larger-scale production of thermoelectric materials is necessary when mass-producing thermoelectric devices at industrial level. Certain fabrication techniques can create inhomogeneity in the material through composition and doping fluctuations throughout the sample, causing local variations in thermoelectric properties. Some variations are in the range of sub-millimeter scale or larger but may be difficult to detect by traditional materials characterization techniques such as x-ray diffraction or scanning electron microscopy when the chemical variation is small but the doping variation, which strongly affects thermoelectric performance, is large. In this paper, a scanning apparatus to directly detect local variations of Seebeck coefficient on both bulk and thin-film samples is used. Results have shown that this technique can be utilized for detection of defective regions, as well as phase separation in the 100-μm range or larger.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1667-1674 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Journal of Electronic Materials |
| Volume | 41 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2012 |
Funding
We thank Eckhard Müller for descriptions of the scanning Seebeck system as well as Gabriele Karpinski, Christian Stiewe, and Nancy Chen for their work on Fig. 3c, Ben Margolis for work on an earlier version of the system, Dr. Jean-Pierre Fleurial and Dr. Teruyuki Ikeda for samples, and ARPA-E for financial support.
Keywords
- Seebeck coefficient
- Thermoelectric
- homogeneity
- mapping
- scanning
- two dimensional
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
- Condensed Matter Physics
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering
- Materials Chemistry