Thermoelectric (TE) technology has a significant impact on low-grade waste heat recovery, increasing the efficiency of energy usage and reducing carbon emissions. Two of the big obstacles for wide application of this technology, however, are the high fabrication cost and low efficiency of thermoelectric modules. By employing Pb_0.98Na_0.02Te-4 mol % SrTe powder, which is one group of superior thermoelectric materials, this work explores the possibility of making PbTe–SrTe-based thermoelectric films via a scalable, low-cost screen printing method and investigates ways of further enhancing their performance. Addition of tellurium powder can significantly increase the thermoelectric performance of the printed PbTe–SrTe films through doping and enhancement of interparticle connection. The conservative estimate of thermoelectric figure of merit, ZT, is above 1.0 at 350 °C for PbTe–SrTe 2 wt % Te sample, which is among the highest for printed thermoelectric films. This opens up a new, low-cost direction for manufacturing high-performance thermoelectric devices.

中文翻译：

---

通过可扩展和低成本印刷的高性能PbTe热电薄膜

热电（TE）技术对低品位废热回收，提高能源利用效率和减少碳排放量具有重大影响。然而，该技术广泛应用的两个主要障碍是热电模块的高制造成本和低效率。通过使用Pb _0.98 Na _0.02Te-4 mol％SrTe粉末是一组优良的热电材料，这项工作探索了通过可扩展的低成本丝网印刷方法制造基于PbTe–SrTe的热电薄膜的可能性，并研究了进一步提高其性能的方法。通过掺杂和增强颗粒间的连接，添加碲粉可以显着提高印刷的PbTe-SrTe薄膜的热电性能。PbTe–SrTe 2 wt％Te样品在350°C下对热电性能的保守估计ZT高于1.0，这在印刷的热电薄膜中是最高的。这为制造高性能热电设备开辟了一个新的，低成本的方向。