Thermoelectric Study of Ag Doped SnSe-Sb2Se3 Based Alloy

摘要

In this article we have synthesized p-type alloy of SnSe and Sb_2Se_3 (10 atomic %) to study the thermoelectric transport properties. The alloy was prepared by melt grown technique followed by spark plasma sintering and latter doped with 2 atomic % Ag to compensate the carrier density in order to achieve higher electrical conductivity (σ). Out of these, the doped sample resulted in the maximum figure of merit, ZT~ 0.7 at 773 K due to the existence of the secondary phase AgSbSe2 and reduced lattice thermal conductivity (0.61 W m~(-1) K~(-1) at 300 K). The fitted lattice thermal conductivity shows that point defect and Umklapp scattering are the primary process of phonon scattering for all the samples whereas the fitted mobility data confirms acoustic phonon scattering along with point defect and grain boundary scattering to be the main carrier scattering mechanism. More over room temperature carrier density and electrical conductivity are found to increase for the doped sample which further corroborate (90%)SnSe-(10%)Sb2Se3:2%Ag to be a potential candidate for highly efficient thermoelectric materials.