Thermoelectric materials with crystal-amorphicity duality induced by large atomic size mismatch

TY - JOUR

T1 - Thermoelectric materials with crystal-amorphicity duality induced by large atomic size mismatch

AU - Zhao, Kunpeng

AU - Eikeland, Espen

AU - He, Dongsheng

AU - Qiu, Wujie

AU - Jin, Zhicheng

AU - Song, Qingfeng

AU - Wei, Tian ran

AU - Qiu, Pengfei

AU - Liu, Jianjun

AU - He, Jiaqing

AU - Iversen, Bo Brummerstedt

AU - He, Jian

AU - Chen, Lidong

AU - Shi, Xun

N1 - Funding Information: The authors thank Dr. Anders B. Blichfeld of Norwegian University of Science and Technology for helpful discussions. This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China ( 2018YFB0703600 ) and National Natural Science Foundation of China ( 91963208 , 51625205 , 51902199 , 11934007 , and 51961135106 ). K.Z. thanks for the support by Shanghai Sailing Program under 19YF1422800 . E.E. and B.B.I. thank Innovation Fund Denmark and the Villum Foundation for their support. Beamtime at beamline BL01B1 at SPring-8, Japan is gratefully acknowledged. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Elsevier Inc.

PY - 2021/5

Y1 - 2021/5

N2 - Discovering novel materials and attaining higher performance are the eternal pursuit of thermoelectric materials research. Here, we report a material series, (Cu1−xAgx)2(Te1−ySy) (0.16 ≤ x ≤ 0.24, 0.16 ≤ y ≤ 0.24), which adopts a complex orthorhombic structure differing from any known crystal structure of (Cu/Ag)2(S/Te). This material series is featured by the crystal-amorphicity duality induced by the large anionic size mismatch: a crystalline sublattice of highly size-mismatched anions Te/S coexists with an amorphous-like sublattice of cations Cu/Ag. In the context of structure-property correlation, the crystal-amorphicity duality gave rise to not only interesting electrical properties but also exceptionally low lattice thermal conductivities from 300 to 1,000 K. A state-of-the-art figure of merit zT of 2.0 is obtained in the x = y = 0.22 sample at 1,000 K. These results give insights into crystal-amorphicity duality as a paradigm-shifting materials design approach to develop high-performance thermoelectric materials.

AB - Discovering novel materials and attaining higher performance are the eternal pursuit of thermoelectric materials research. Here, we report a material series, (Cu1−xAgx)2(Te1−ySy) (0.16 ≤ x ≤ 0.24, 0.16 ≤ y ≤ 0.24), which adopts a complex orthorhombic structure differing from any known crystal structure of (Cu/Ag)2(S/Te). This material series is featured by the crystal-amorphicity duality induced by the large anionic size mismatch: a crystalline sublattice of highly size-mismatched anions Te/S coexists with an amorphous-like sublattice of cations Cu/Ag. In the context of structure-property correlation, the crystal-amorphicity duality gave rise to not only interesting electrical properties but also exceptionally low lattice thermal conductivities from 300 to 1,000 K. A state-of-the-art figure of merit zT of 2.0 is obtained in the x = y = 0.22 sample at 1,000 K. These results give insights into crystal-amorphicity duality as a paradigm-shifting materials design approach to develop high-performance thermoelectric materials.

KW - atomic size mismatch

KW - crystal-amorphicity duality

KW - sublattice

KW - thermal conductivity

KW - thermoelectric

KW - CHALCOGENIDES

KW - TRANSPORT

KW - PHASE-TRANSITIONS

KW - PERFORMANCE

KW - THERMAL-CONDUCTIVITY

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85105717192&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.joule.2021.03.012

DO - 10.1016/j.joule.2021.03.012

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85105717192

SN - 2542-4785

VL - 5

SP - 1183

EP - 1195

JO - Joule

JF - Joule

IS - 5

ER -