Enhancement of Thermoelectric Performance of n-Type PbSe by Cr Doping with Optimized Carrier Concentration

Ti, V, Cr, Nb, and Mo are found to be effective at increasing the Seebeck coefficient and power factor of n-type PbSe at temperatures below 600 K. It is found that the higher Seebeck coefficients and power factors are due to higher Hall mobility ≈1000 cm[superscript 2] V[superscript −]1s[superscript...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zhang, Qian, Chere, Eyob Kebede, McEnaney, Kenneth, Yao, Mengliang, Cao, Feng, Ni, Yizhou, Chen, Shuo, Opeil, Cyril, Chen, Gang, Ren, Zhifeng
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Wiley Blackwell 2015
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/99761
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3968-8530
Description
Summary:Ti, V, Cr, Nb, and Mo are found to be effective at increasing the Seebeck coefficient and power factor of n-type PbSe at temperatures below 600 K. It is found that the higher Seebeck coefficients and power factors are due to higher Hall mobility ≈1000 cm[superscript 2] V[superscript −]1s[superscript −1] at lower carrier concentration. A larger average ZT value (relevant for applications) can be obtained by an optimization of carrier concentration to ≈10[superscript 18]–10[superscript 19] cm[superscript −3]. Even though the highest room temperature power factor ≈3.3 × 10[superscript −3] W m[superscript −1] K[superscript −2] is found in 1 at% Mo-doped PbSe, the highest ZT is achieved in Cr-doped PbSe. Combined with the lower thermal conductivity, ZT is improved to ≈0.4 at room temperature and peak ZTs of ≈1.0 are observed at ≈573 K for Pb[subscript 0.9925]Cr[subscript 0.0075]Se and ≈673 K for Pb[subscript 0.995]Cr[subscript 0.005]Se. The calculated device efficiency of Pb[subscript 0.995]Cr[subscript 0.005]Se is as high as ≈12.5% with cold side 300 K and hot side 873 K, higher than those of all the n-type PbSe materials reported in the literature.