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Optimizing thermoelectric properties of BiSe through Cu additive enhanced effective mass and phonon scattering

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Abstract

Known as a weak topological insulator (TI), BiSe structurally exhibits alternating stacks of quantum spin Hall bilayer (“Bi2”) and three-dimensional TI layer (“Bi2Se3”). The low lattice thermal conductivity of BiSe due to the presence of Bi2 bilayers promises potentially good thermoelectric performance. Herein, the thermoelectric properties of nominal Bi1−xCuxSe samples were studied as the functions of the content of Cu additive and temperature. It is found that Cu additives in BiSe (1) profoundly affect the texture of densified polycrystalline samples by inclining the crystallographic c-axis parallel toward the pressure direction in the densification process, (2) increase considerably the effective mass and thus the Seebeck coefficient, and (3) yield point defects and Cu–Se secondary phases that effectively scatter heat-carrying phonons. As a result, the optimized electrical and thermal properties yield a thermoelectric figure of merit of zT ~ 0.29 in Bi1−xCuxSe (x = 0.03) sample at 467 K in parallel to the pressure direction and a zT ~ 0.20 at 468 K in the perpendicular direction.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the Graduate Scientific Research and Innovation Foundation of Chongqing, China (No. CYB 19064), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51772035, 11674040, 51472036 and 51672270), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 106112017CDJQJ308821), the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, CAS (No. QYZDB-SSW-SLH016), the CSC Scholarship (No. 201806050180), 2019 ITS Summer Fellowship, the Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing, China (No.cstc2019jcyj-msxmX0554) and the Starting Research Fund from Chongqing University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chongqing Key Laboratory of Soft Condensed Matter Physics and Smart Materials, College of Physics, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 401331, China

    Xing-Chen Shen & Xiao-Yuan Zhou

  2. Chongqing Institute of Green and Intelligent Technology, Chinese Academy of Science, Chongqing, 400714, China

    Xing-Chen Shen & Guo-Yu Wang

  3. Analytical and Testing Center of Chongqing University, Chongqing, 401331, China

    Xiao Zhang, Bin Zhang & Xiao-Yuan Zhou

  4. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, 29634, USA

    Xing-Chen Shen & Jian He

  5. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100044, China

    Guo-Yu Wang

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  1. Xing-Chen Shen
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  2. Xiao Zhang
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Correspondence to Xiao-Yuan Zhou.

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Shen, XC., Zhang, X., Zhang, B. et al. Optimizing thermoelectric properties of BiSe through Cu additive enhanced effective mass and phonon scattering. Rare Met. 39, 1374–1382 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12598-020-01491-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12598-020-01491-5

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