Improvement of thermoelectric properties of Cu3SbSe4 compound by In doping

摘要

In doped Cu3Sb1-xInxSe4 (x = 0, 0.002, 0.003 and 0.004) compounds have been fabricated via a combined process of melting-pulverization-hot pressing. Effect of In doping on their thermoelectric properties have been explored and it reveals that In occupies the site of Sb and plays a role of acceptor dopant. With the increase of In doping content, the electrical resistivity and Seebeck coefficient decrease, and the power factor is obviously improved at elevated temperature compared with un-doped Cu3SbSe4. Meanwhile, the thermal conductivity is also reduced due to the extra phonon scattering by point detects introduced by In doping. As a consequence, a maximum ZT value of 0.50 (at 643 K) is obtained for the doped sample (x = 0.003), which is about 47% higher than that of the un-doped Cu3SbSe4. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.