A nano-engineering approach has been developed for the synthesis of the thermoelectric composite materials. A possible way for enhancing ZT is to incorporate thermoelectric materials, e.g. Skutterudite, into the nano-sized pores of three-dimensional periodic arrays. The present study reports the development of a method for making a Nano-engineered Thermoelectric (NETE) coating on silica particles. The process consists of coating silica particles with gold and then with thermoelectric material. Gold coating has the advantage that post-coating assembly provides a continuous network of skutterudite-filled gaps between gold interconnects. The second coating was carried out by chemical co-precipitation of Co and Sb precursors from a solid solution onto the surfaces of the gold-coated particles under controlled conditions,. Through further heat-treatments (calcination, reduction and alloying), a Skutterudite layer has been formed in high purity. Both the gold-and gold/Skutterudite-coated particles retain the morphology of the original silica particles. In this paper, the processing conditions and materials characterizations are reported and discussed.
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