Thermoelectric properties of Zn– and Ce–alloyed In2O3 and the effect of SiO2 nanoparticle additives

Thermoelectric materials are considered promising candidates for thermal energy conversion. This study presents the fabrication of Zn– and Ce–alloyed In2O3 with a porous structure. The electrical conductivity was improved by the alloying effect and an ultra–low thermal conductivity was observed owing to the porous structure, which concomitantly provide a distinct enhancement of ZT. However, SiO2 nanoparticle additives react with the matrix to form a third-phase impurity, which weakens the electrical conductivity and increases the thermal conductivity. A thermoelectric module was constructed for the purpose of thermal heat energy conversion. Our experimental results proved that both an enhancement in electrical conductivity and a suppression in thermal conductivity could be achieved through nano–engineering. This approach presents a feasible route to synthesize porous thermoelectric oxides, and provides insight into the effect of additives; moreover, this approach is a cost-effective method for the fabrication of thermoelectric oxides without traditional hot-pressing and spark–plasma–sintering processes.

Electrical and thermal transport behaviours of high-entropy perovskite thermoelectric oxides

Oxide-based ceramics could be promising thermoelectric materials because of their thermal and chemical stability at high temperature. However, their mediocre electrical conductivity or high thermal conductivity is still a challenge for the use in commercial devices. Here, we report significantly suppressed thermal conductivity in SrTiO3-based thermoelectric ceramics via high-entropy strategy for the first time, and optimized electrical conductivity by defect engineering. In high-entropy (Ca0.2Sr0.2Ba0.2Pb0.2La0.2)TiO3 bulks, the minimum thermal conductivity can be 1.17 W/(m·K) at 923 K, which should be ascribed to the large lattice distortion and the huge mass fluctuation effect. The power factor can reach about 295 μW/(m·K2) by inducing oxygen vacancies. Finally, the ZT value of 0.2 can be realized at 873 K in this bulk sample. This approach proposed a new concept of high entropy into thermoelectric oxides, which could be generalized for designing high-performance thermoelectric oxides with low thermal conductivity.

Review on texturization effects in thermoelectric oxides

Sustainable energy sources and energy-harvesting technologies have been researched for decades. Thermoelectric conversion is currently one of the primary foci in this area. Thermoelectric research has been concentrated into two parts—(i) strategies to enhance the efficiency of existing thermoelectric materials and (ii) development of new materials with promising thermoelectric parameters. Although such strategies have led to the improvement of thermoelectric non-oxide-based materials, the limitations possessed by them does not allow to be used at high temperatures. Due to the same reason, oxide-based materials have gained much attention. Here, we discuss about the oxide thermoelectric materials in detail and the effect of texturization on their morphology and transport properties. There is a lot of scope available for such class of materials for high-temperature applications.

A and B site doping of a phonon-glass perovskite oxide thermoelectric

The effect of structural symmetry is investigated in phonon-glass electron-crystal (PGEC) La1−yKyTiO3 and La0.5K0.5Ti1−zNbzO3 thermoelectric oxides