Abstract Low-cost Ce has been proved to be an effective auxiliary filler for performance tuning in CoSb3-based skutterudite, one of the most promising thermoelectric materials at medium temperature. However, the low solubility of Ce in CoSb3 makes its overall thermoelectric properties so far inferior to that with expensive and scarce Yb filler. Herein, using non-equilibrium processing, we successfully synthesized a series of double-filled skutterudites with Ce as the dominating filling element and Y as the auxiliary filler. Our investigation shows that Y filling not only optimizes the carrier concentration and thus enhances the overall power factor but also introduces additional phonon scattering and hence leads to significantly suppressed lattice thermal conductivity. The concurrently optimized electrical and thermal properties realize the maximum ZT of ~1.37 at 873 K in the Y0.05Ce0.15Co4Sb12 sample, prevailing over the other involved Ce single- or even double-filled skutterudites, which will potentially facilitate a widespread application of filled skutterudites.

中文翻译：

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Y在n型YxCe0.15Co4Sb12方钴矿中的溶解度及其对热电性能的影响

摘要 低成本的 Ce 已被证明是一种有效的辅助填料，可用于调节 CoSb3 基方钴矿，该方钴矿是最有前途的中温热电材料之一。然而，Ce 在 CoSb3 中的低溶解度使其整体热电性能远不如昂贵且稀缺的 Yb 填料。在此，我们通过非平衡处理，成功合成了一系列以 Ce 为主要填充元素、Y 为辅助填充物的双填充方钴矿。我们的研究表明，Y 填充不仅优化了载流子浓度，从而提高了整体功率因数，而且还引入了额外的声子散射，从而显着抑制了晶格热导率。