Significant ZT Enhancement in p-type Ti(Co,Fe)Sb-InSb Nanocomposites via a Synergistic High Mobility Electron Injection Energy filtering and Boundary Scattering Approach

TL;DR

This study demonstrates a significant enhancement in thermoelectric performance of p-type Ti(Co,Fe)Sb via nanocomposite engineering using InSb nanoinclusions, combining high mobility electron injection, energy filtering, and boundary scattering.

Contribution

It introduces a nanostructuring approach that improves thermoelectric properties in p-type half-Heusler compounds, similar to previous n-type results, advancing materials design for thermoelectric applications.

Findings

Achieved ZT=0.33 at 900 K with 1% InSb nanoinclusions

450% improvement over nanoinclusion-free samples

Simultaneous enhancement of Seebeck coefficient, electrical conductivity, and reduction of thermal conductivity

Abstract

It has been demonstrated that InSb nanoinclusions, which are formed in situ, can simultaneously improve all three individual thermoelectric properties of the n-type half Heusler compound (Ti,Zr,Hf)(Co,Ni)Sb [Xie et al., Acta Mater. 58, 4795 (2010)]. In the work presented herein, we have adopted the same approach to the p-type half Heusler compound Ti(Co,Fe)Sb. The results of resistivity, Seebeck coefficient, thermal conductivity, and Hall coefficient measurements indicate that the combined high mobility electron injection, low energy electron filtering, and boundary scattering, again, lead to a simultaneous improvement of all three individual thermoelectric properties: enhanced Seebeck coefficient and electrical conductivity as well as reduced lattice thermal conductivity. A figure of merit of ZT=0.33 was attained at 900 K for the sample containing 1 atomic percent InSb nanoinclusions, a 450 percent improvement over the nanoinclusion-free sample. This represents a rare case that the same nanostructuring approach successfully works for both p-type and n-type thermoelectric materials of the same class, hence pointing to a promising materials design route for higher performance half-Heusler materials in the future and hopefully will realize similar improvement in TE devices based on such half Heusler alloys.