11-02/03 :: February / March 2011


nanotimes News in Brief


Materials // Bi2


Te3 T -based TE Nanocomposites


83


hermoelectric (TE) materials can be used to directly convert between heat and electricity


through the Seebeck effect and Peltier effect. They usually act as solid state refrigerators and heat pumps without moving parts and environmentally harmful fluids.


Bismuth telluride (Bi2Te3 ) based alloys are one of the


most excellent TE materials at room temperature, used commercially for refrigeration and temperature control in fields such as beverage coolers and laser diode coolers. The TE figure of merit (ZT) of com- mercial Bi2


Te3 -based alloys is only about 1.0. To in-


crease the efficiency for widely practical applications, materials with higher ZT are desired to be explored.


Recently, the Division of Functional Materials and Nanodevices in Ningbo Institute of Materials Tech- nology &. Engineering (NIMTE), China, has made a series of progress in nanostructured Bi2


Te3 composites.


By embedding ZnAlO nanopowder with high elec- trical conductivity into matrix, p-type Bi2


Te3 -based


TE nanocomposite was prepared using zone melting method. A peak ZT of 1.33 at 370 K was achieved, mainly due to the remarkably increased electrical conductivity and the simultaneously decreased lattice thermal conductivity caused by the introduction


Ting Zhang, Qiushi Zhang, Jun Jiang, Zhen Xiong, Jianmin Chen, Yulong Zhang, Wei Li, and Gaojie Xu: Enhanced thermoelectric performance in p-type BiSbTe bulk alloy with nanoinclusion of ZnAlO, In: Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 98(2011), Issue 2, January 10, 2011, Article 022104 (3 pages), DOI:10.1063/1.3541654 : http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3541654


-based TE


of ZnAlO nanopowder. Through the post sintering process, ZT value of this Bi2


Te3 could reach up to 1.4.


Temperature dependence of ZT for Bi2Te3-based composites, © NIMTE


-based nanocomposite


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