Enhancement of thermoelectric figure-of-merit by resonant states of aluminium doping in lead selenide

• DOI: 10.1039/c1ee02465e
• Publication Date: 2011-11-11T13:30:46Z
• Authors: Qinyong Zhang; Hui Wang; Weishu Liu; Hengzhi Wang; Bo Yu; Qian Zhang; Zhiting Tian; George Ni; Sangyeop Lee; Keivan Esfarjani; Gang Chen; Zhifeng Ren
• Keywords: Lead selenide; Figure of Merit; Selenide; Phonon scattering

By adding aluminium (Al) into lead selenide (PbSe), we successfully prepared n-type PbSe thermoelectric materials with a figure-of-merit (ZT) of 1.3 at 850 K. Such high ZT is achieved by combination Seebeck coefficient caused very possibly the resonant states in conduction band created Al dopant and low thermal conductivity from nanosized phonon scattering centers.