Chemistry of Materials
Chemistry of Materials
5 years ago

Significant Enhancement of the Thermoelectric Performance of Higher Manganese Silicide by Incorporating MnTe Nanophase Derived from Te Nanowire

Significant Enhancement of the Thermoelectric Performance of Higher Manganese Silicide by Incorporating MnTe Nanophase Derived from Te Nanowire
Shinsuke Hirono, Fu-Hua Sun, Jing-Feng Li, Jin-Feng Dong, Zhiliang Li
Higher manganese silicide (HMS) is a naturally abundant, eco-friendly, and low-cost p-type thermoelectric semiconductor with high power factor (PF); however, its figure of merit (ZT) is very low due to an intrinsically high thermal conductivity (κ). It is also difficult to synthesize a HMS single phase without MnSi or Si second phase, which generally leads to a significant decrease of the PF and/or increased κ. In this study, pure HMS was obtained via wet ball milling in combination with spark plasma sintering. A further p-type MnTe, with high Seebeck coefficient (S) and low κ, was incorporated into the HMS matrix to form MnTe/HMS composites. To effectively decrease κ, while simultaneously enhancing the electrical conductivity, Te nanowires of ∼35 nm in diameter were synthesized with a solution phase method and subsequently embedded to HMS to form MnTe/HMS nano/bulk structures. The incorporation of Te nanowires led to a 38% reduction of κ in addition to a slight increase of S. Finally, the ZTmax of MnTe/HMS nano/bulk composites increased by ∼71% from 0.41 to 0.70. This study demonstrates a unique and facile method to boost the ZT of HMS to a high level, which is also applicable to other thermoelectric materials.

Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.7b02270

DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.7b02270

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