Fig. 1: Nano-sintering-aid at GBs improves TE performance in Mg3(Bi, Sb)2-based materials.
From: Approaching crystal’s limit of thermoelectrics by nano-sintering-aid at grain boundaries
a A schematic diagram to fabricate large-grain materials with nano-sintering-aid by liquid-phase sintering. The three dominant stages overlap: grain rearrangement, solution-precipitation, and Ostwald ripening. b Temperature dependent figure of merit zT for Mg3.2Bi1.195Sb0.795Te0.01 – x wt% Mg2Cu with different average grain sizes, in comparison with the reported data of Mg3(Bi, Sb)2-based materials22,24,26,27,30,50,51,52. c Comparison of the measured conversion efficiency among Mg3Sb2-based modules as a function of hot-side temperature Th5,22,25,26,48,53,54. The cold-side temperature Tc is fixed at 288 K. The data of Bi2Te3-based modules are also plotted for comparison55,56. The inset shows the photograph of our TE module.
