Reporters learned from Hefei University of Technology, the school researchers pioneered the use of melt treatment of thermoelectric materials to control the solidification of microstructure to achieve such a significant increase in the thermoelectric conversion efficiency of materials, and batch, rapid development of high-performance thermoelectric materials to open up A new path.The series of research results have been published in the world-renowned journal "nano-energy".
Thermoelectric materials are a kind of functional materials that can convert thermal energy and electric energy into each other. They can make use of industrial, domestic or natural heat for temperature difference power generation and thermoelectric cooling, and do not need special machinery for their thermoelectric conversion. They have no vibration noise, Green emission and other advantages have become the focus of energy and environmental strategies of all countries.Excellent thermoelectric materials should have high Seebeck coefficient and conductivity, and low thermal conductivity; Due to the inherent constraints of the three performance parameters, if the optimization One of its properties, then affect other properties, so the thermoelectric conversion efficiency is difficult to significantly improve.
Hefei University of Technology, Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, Professor Zu-Fang Zu and his team, based on the accumulation of liquid state changes in the long-term basic research, created a melt processing method for the preparation of thermoelectric materials to control the solidification of microstructure, significantly reduce the thermal conductivity at the same time, Also significantly improve the Seebeck coefficient, while the basic conductivity without loss, to achieve the electrical and thermal performance of the collaborative optimization.
The results show that the ZT value of bismuth-antimony-tellurium P-type (positively charged) semiconductors can be increased by 27% with this original method, and the bismuth-tellurium-selenium N-type At the same time, the method can directly obtain the block by means of the coagulation method, overcoming the inefficiencies of the methods that usually require complex preparation and subsequent processing, and is of great use in promoting the industrial production and wide application of the thermoelectric material It is of great significance.
