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Investigation of the sintering pressure and thermal conductivity anisotropy of melt-spun spark-plasma-sintered (Bi,Sb)2Te3 thermoelectric materials

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2011

Wenjie Xie ,
Jian He ,
Song Zhu ,
Tim Holgate ,
Shanyu Wang ,
Xinfeng Tang ,
Qingjie Zhang  and
Terry M. Tritt
Wenjie Xie
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China; and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina 29634-0978
Jian He
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina 29634-0978
Song Zhu
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina 29634-0978
Tim Holgate
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina 29634-0978
Shanyu Wang
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China
Xinfeng Tang*
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China
Qingjie Zhang
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China
Terry M. Tritt*
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina 29634-0978
*
a)Address all correspondence to these authors. e-mail: tangxf@whut.edu.cn
b)e-mail: ttritt@clemson.edu
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Abstract

A combined melt-spinning and spark-plasma-sintering (SPS) procedure has proven to be effective in preparing high-performance (Bi,Sb)2Te3 thermoelectric (TE) nanocomposites via creating and optimizing their resulting multiscale microstructures. (Bi,Sb)2Te3 possesses a highly anisotropic crystal structure; therefore, it is important to investigate any potential correlation between the SPS conditions, the as-formed microstructures, and the resulting TE properties. In this work, we investigate the correlation between the SPS pressure, the microstructure texture, and the anisotropy of the total thermal conductivity in these melt-spun spark-plasma-sintered (Bi,Sb)2Te3 compounds. The thermal conductivity has been measured in directions that are both perpendicular and parallel to the pressing (or force) direction by rearranging the sample geometry as described in the text. The results show that the anisotropy of thermal conductivity is ∼0, 2–3, 6–7, and 13–15% for the samples sintered at pressures of 20, 30, 45, and 60 MPa, respectively. These results are consistent with an increasing degree of orientation observed by x-ray diffraction and electron microscopy.

Keywords

Thermal conductivityThermoelectric
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Materials Research , Volume 26 , Issue 15: Focus Issue: Advances in Thermoelectric Materials , 14 August 2011 , pp. 1791 - 1799
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2011

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