CC BY
7iSHS 2019
Moscow, Russia
ONE-STEP ULTRA-RAPID FABRICATION OF BULK THERMOELECTRIC MATERIALS VIA SELF-PROPAGATING HIGH-TEMPERATURE SYNTHESIS COMBINED WITH IN-SITU QUICK PRESSING
Y. Yan*", T. Hu", X. Su", W. Liu", and X. Tang"
aState Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing,
Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070 China *e-mail: yanyonggao@whut.edu.cn
DOI: 10.24411/9999-0014A-2019-10192
Cu2Se is a promising material for high temperature thermoelectric energy conversion due to its unique combination of excellent electronic properties and low thermal conductivity owing to its ionic liquid characteristic at high temperature. The conventional fabrication of bulk thermoelectric materials usually involves time and energy consuming steps including melting, annealing and sintering et al, which restricts the large-scale application. In this paper, fully dense single-phase bulk Cu2Se material was prepared by the combination of self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS) with in-situ quick pressing (QP) for the first time. This new approach shortens the duration of the synthesis from days to hours compared to conventional preparation methods. SHS-QP technique is an ultra-fast preparation method, which utilizes the heat released by the SHS reaction and an external applied pressure to achieve the synthesis and densification of materials in one-step. The ultra-fast process of the SHS-QP technique enables the fabrication of single-phase Cu2Se bulk materials with relative density of over 98% and with precise control over the stoichiometry owing to the ability to suppress the Se vapor during the reaction. The SHS-QP prepared Cu2Se samples exhibit excellent thermoelectric figure of merit, ZT ~ 1.46 at 900 K, which is comparable to those of Cu2Se materials prepared by conventional methods. This study opens a new avenue for the ultra-fast and low-cost fabrication of Cu2Se thermoelectric materials.
Y. Yan et al.
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