4.7 Article

Effect of hot pressing on the microstructure and thermoelectric properties of TGZM-grown YbFe-doped CoSb3 skutterudite

Journal

CERAMICS INTERNATIONAL
Volume 47, Issue 7, Pages 8949-8958

Publisher

ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.ceramint.2020.12.017

Keywords

CoSb3; Temperature gradient zone melting; Hot processing; Thermoelectric properties

Funding

  1. National Natural Science Foundation of China [51774239]
  2. Research Funds of the State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing in NWPU [2019TS-01]

Ask authors/readers for more resources

A new strategy of combining temperature gradient zone melting process with hot pressing was successfully employed to synthesize YbFe-doped CoSb3, leading to enhanced thermoelectric properties and reduced grain size. This work provides an alternative way to fabricate skutterudite materials and improve their development.
Skutterudites based on CoSb3 are considered potential candidates in thermoelectric applications in the field of mid-temperature power generation. The annealing process necessitates more than a week to complete the peritectic phase transition for traditional melting-quenching-annealing-sintering methods. Herein, a new strategy combining the temperature gradient zone melting process with hot pressing (TGZM-HP) was successfully employed to synthesize YbFe-doped p-type CoSb3 in a shorter time. The resulting samples show enhanced thermoelectric properties compared to TGZM-grown ones, especially in the case of 1 at.% YbFe-doped CoSb3. This compound exhibits a maximal Seebeck coefficient of 166.3 mu VK-1 and a power factor of 1.8 mWm(-1)K(-2) at 723 K, showing an increase in these values of 25% and 51%, respectively. Moreover, phonon scattering appears to be enhanced due to the significant reduction in the grain size of the TGZM-HP samples, resulting in a minimum thermal conductivity of 2.71 Wm(-1)K(-1). A dimensionless figure of merit (ZT) of 0.48 was obtained for 1 at.% YbFe-doped CoSb3. This value is 1.6 times larger than that measured for TGZM-grown CoSb3. This work provides an alternative strategy to fabricate skutterudite materials and foster their development.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.7
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available