Abstract
Nanostructured Ag-Pb-Te thermoelectric materials were fabricated by unidirectionally solidifying the ternary Ag-Pb-Te eutectic and near-eutectic alloys using the Bridgeman method. Specially, the Bridgman-grown eutectic alloy exhibited a partially aligned lamellar microstructure, which consisted of Ag 5Te 3 and Te phases, with additional 200-600 nm size particles of PbTe. The self-assembled interfaces altered the thermal and electronic transport properties in the bulk Ag-Pb-Te eutectic alloy. Presumably due to phonon scattering from the nanoscale microstructure, a low thermal conductivity (κ 0.3 W/mK) was achieved of the eutectic alloy, leading to a zT peak of 0.41 at 400 K.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | 023107 |
Journal | Applied Physics Letters |
Volume | 101 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 9 2012 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)