Nanostructuring and thermoelectric properties of bulk N-type Mg2Si

Preparation and thermoelectric properties of nanostructured n-type Mg2Si bulk materials were reported. Nanosized Mg2Si powder was obtained by mechanical milling of the microsized Mg2Si powder prepared by solid-state reaction. The bulk materials with 30 nm and 5 A mu m were prepared by spark plasma sintering of the nanosized and microsized Mg2Si powder, respectively. Both the samples show n-type conduction and the Seebeck coefficient of the sintered samples increase determinately with the grain size decrease from 5 A mu m to 30 nm. On the other hand, the electrical and thermal conductivity decrease with the decrease of grain size. Accordingly, decreasing their grain size increases their thermoelectric-figure-of-merit. A maximum thermoelectric figure of merit of 0.36 has been obtained for the nanostuctured Mg2Si sample at 823 K, which is 38% higher than that of microsized Mg2Si bulk materials and higher than results of other literatures. It could be expected that the properties of the nanocomposites could be further improved by doping optimization.