Browsing by Author "Hsing, Cheng-Rong"

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Enhancing thermoelectric performance by Fermi level tuning and thermal conductivity degradation in (Ge1-xBix)Te crystals
(2019-06-13)
Wei, Pai-Chun
;
Cai, Cheng-Xun
;
Hsing, Cheng-Rong
;
Wei, Ching-Ming
;
Yu, Shih-Hsun
In this work, a high thermoelectric figure of merit, zT of 1.9 at 740 K is achieved in Ge1-xBixTe crystals through the concurrent of Seebeck coefficient enhancement and thermal conductivity reduction with Bi dopants. The substitution of Bi for Ge not only compensates the superfluous hole carriers in pristine GeTe but also shifts the Fermi level (E-F) to an eligible region. Experimentally, with moderate 6-10% Bi dopants, the carrier concentration is drastically decreased from 8.7 x 10(20) cm(-3) to 3-5 x 10(20) cm(-3) and the Seebeck coefficient is boosted three times to 75 mu VK-1. In the meantime, based on the density functional theory (DFT) calculation, the Fermi level E-F starts to intersect with the pudding mold band at L point, where the band effective mass is enhanced. The enhanced Seebeck coefficient effectively compensates the decrease of electrical conductivity and thus successfully maintain the power factor as large as or even superior than that of the pristine GeTe. In addition, the Bi doping significantly reduces both thermal conductivities of carriers and lattices to an extremely low limit of 1.57W m(-1)K(-1) at 740 K with 10% Bi dopants, which is an about 63% reduction as compared with that of pristine GeTe. The elevated figure of merit observed in Ge1-xBixTe specimens is therefore realized by synergistically optimizing the power factor and downgrading the thermal conductivity of alloying effect and lattice anharmonicity caused by Bi doping.
Thermoelectric Figure-of-Merit of Fully Dense Single-Crystalline SnSe
(2019-03-01)
Wei, Pai-Chun
;
Bhattacharya, Sriparna
;
Liu, Yu-Fei
;
Liu, Fengjiao
;
He, Jian
Single-crystalline SnSe has attracted much attention because of its record high figure-of-merit ZT approximate to 2.6; however, this high ZT has been associated with the low mass density of samples which leaves the intrinsic ZT of fully dense pristine SnSe in question. To this end, we prepared high-quality fully dense SnSe single crystals and performed detailed structural, electrical, and thermal transport measurements over a wide temperature range along the major crystallographic directions. Our single crystals were fully dense and of high purity as confirmed via high statistics Sn-119 Mossbauer spectroscopy that revealed < 0.35 at. % Sn(IV) in pristine SnSe. The temperature-dependent heat capacity (C-p) provided evidence for the displacive second-order phase transition from Pnma to Cmcm phase at T-c approximate to 800 K and a small but finite Sommerfeld coefficient gamma(0) which implied the presence of a finite Fermi surface. Interestingly, despite its strongly temperature-dependent band gap inferred from density functional theory calculations, SnSe behaves like a low-carrier-concentration multiband metal below 600 K, above which it exhibits a semiconducting behavior. Notably, our high-quality single-crystalline SnSe exhibits a thermoelectric figure-of-merit ZT similar to 1.0, similar to 0.8, and similar to 0.25 at 850 K along the b, c, and a directions, respectively.