Although many thermoelectric materials, such as Bi₂Te₃, PbTe and CoSb₃, possess excellent thermoelectric properties, they often contain toxic and expensive elements. Moreover, most of them are synthesized by processes such as vacuum melting, mechanical alloying or solid-state reactions, which are highly energy and time intensive. All these factors limit commercial applications of the thermoelectric materials. Therefore, it is imperative to develop efficient, inexpensive and non-toxic materials and explore rapid and low-cost synthesis methods. Herein we demonstrated a rapid, facile and low-cost synthesis route that combines thermal explosion (TE) with plasma-activated sintering and used it to prepare environmentally benign CuFeS_2+2x. The phase transformation that occurred during the TE and correlations between the microstructure and transport properties were investigated. In a TE process, single-phase CuFeS₂ was obtained in a short time and the thermoelectric performance of the bulk samples was better than that of the samples that were synthesized using traditional methods. Furthermore, the effect of phase boundaries on the transport properties was investigated and the underlying physical mechanisms that led to an improvement in the thermoelectric performance were revealed. This work provides several new ideas regarding the TE process and its utilization in the synthesis of thermoelectric materials.

尽管许多热电材料（例如Bi ₂ Te ₃，PbTe和CoSb ₃）具有出色的热电特性，但它们通常包含有毒且昂贵的元素。此外，它们中的大多数是通过诸如真空熔融，机械合金化或固态反应之类的过程合成的，这些过程耗费大量能量和时间。所有这些因素限制了热电材料的商业应用。因此，迫切需要开发高效，廉价且无毒的材料，并探索快速且低成本的合成方法。在本文中，我们展示了一种快速，简便且低成本的合成路线，该路线将热爆炸（TE）与等离子活化烧结相结合，并用于制备对环境无害的CuFeS _{2 + 2 x}。研究了在TE期间发生的相变以及微观结构和传输性质之间的相关性。在TE工艺中，在短时间内获得了单相CuFeS ₂，并且大块样品的热电性能优于使用传统方法合成的样品。此外，研究了相边界对输运性质的影响，并揭示了导致热电性能改善的潜在物理机理。这项工作为TE工艺及其在热电材料合成中的利用提供了一些新思路。