Liangwei Fu

TL;DR: This work provides an effective strategy to enhance thermoelectric performance by simultaneously improving electrical and thermal transport properties in n-type PbTe by synergistically suppressing lattice thermal conductivity and enhancing carrier mobility by introducing Cu2Te inclusions.

TL;DR: In this paper, a liquid phase compaction method is used to fabricate low-angle grain boundaries with dense dislocation arrays, which shows the typical feature of lowangle grain boundary with denser dislocation array.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors reported that the electrical and thermal transport properties of n-type PbTe can be simultaneously improved by introducing just one component, MnTe, and obtained a maximum ZT of ∼1.6 at 773 K and an average ZTave of > 1.0 at 300-873 K in n-Type MnTe alloyed PbTE.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors showed that endotaxial Sb nanoprecipitates were produced in the PbTe samples at room temperature, and that part of these Sb particles formed SbPb-SbTe dual-site substitutional point defects as temperature increased.

Abstract: Tin selenide (SnSe), a simple binary compound with low-cost, earth-abundant and eco-friendly elements, has aroused extensive interest in the thermoelectric community on account of its promising power generation. Herein, we report a much more advantageous SnS crystal with promising thermoelectric performance, as an alternative to SnSe. We found that the maximum ZT > 1.0 at 873 K and high device ZT (ZTdev) > 0.57 from 300 to 873 K can be achieved in hole-doped SnS crystals, projecting a conversion efficiency of ∼10.4%. We attribute the excellent performance of SnS to its remarkable electron and phonon band structures. SnS possesses multiple valence bands, which can be activated by hole doping through pushing the Fermi level deep into the valence band structure, and activating several Fermi pockets to produce enhanced Seebeck coefficients and high power factors ∼30 μW cm−1 K−2 at 300 K. Meanwhile, the anharmonic and anisotropic bonding of SnS leads to a low thermal conductivity, which ranges from 0.65 to 0.85 W m−1 K−1 at 873 K. Our results indicate that SnS is a promising thermoelectric material for energy conversion applications in low and moderate temperature ranges.