Nature Communications (Jul 2016)

Non-equilibrium processing leads to record high thermoelectric figure of merit in PbTe–SrTe

  • Gangjian Tan,
  • Fengyuan Shi,
  • Shiqiang Hao,
  • Li-Dong Zhao,
  • Hang Chi,
  • Xiaomi Zhang,
  • Ctirad Uher,
  • Chris Wolverton,
  • Vinayak P. Dravid,
  • Mercouri G. Kanatzidis

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12167
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 1
pp. 1 – 9

Abstract

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Alloying lead telluride has proven a good strategy to improve its thermoelectric properties. Here, the authors use a rapid temperature quenching to prepare compounds alloyed above the thermodynamic solubility limit, which results in band convergence and high thermoelectric figures of merit.