Progress of Bi-Te Based Thin Film Thermoelectric Materials
GUO Tao1,2, LI Shuo2,*, YAO Yaxuan2, NAN Bohang1, XU Guiying1,*, REN Lingling2
1 School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China 2 Center for Advanced Measurement Science, National Institute of Metrology, Beijing 100029, China
Abstract: Thermoelectric materials (TEs) are a kind of functional material which can realize the direct conversion between thermal energy and electric energy. It is hard for bulk thermoelectric materials to improve the properties because the thermal conductivity of them cannot be reduced effectively. In the early 1990s, Hicks and other researchers put forward the theory that low-dimensionalization could greatly improve the perfor-mance of TEs, and then the research of thermoelectric thin films has been widely concerned. The reason for low-dimensional materials having higher performance is that they can produce quantum confinement effect, which limits the motion of electrons in the compressed dimension. Firstly, the electron density of states with a positive correlation to Seebeck coefficient increases in the vicinity of the Fermi level, and thus the Seebeck coefficient of the low-dimensional thermoelectric materials increases significantly, compared with the bulk materials. Secondly, thin film materials have more grain boundaries that can scatter the phonon, which will reduce the lattice thermal conductivity effectively. As a result, the thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT value) of the film materials can be improved remarkably through the combined action of the two effects. At the beginning of the research on low-dimensional thermoelectric materials, it is proved that quantum effect can influence Seebeck coefficient and conductivity of the materials, which can control them independently to improve the ZT value of the materials through mathematical modeling and calculation. The later experiments confirm that the proper heat treatment process of thin films can reduce the defects effectively and improve the comprehensive properties. Therefore, the heat treatment and preparation process of thin films are very important to improve the performance of TEs. In order to obtain low-dimensional TEs, thin film materials preparation methods have been applied and have their own advantages and disadvantages. Bi-Te based TEs have become the most widely used low temperature thermoelectric materials at present because it can be not only applied in low temperature power generation but also in low temperature cooling. Although the properties in the bulk state have been improved, the theoretical research of thermoelectric properties in the thin film state is not enough. As a result, Bi-Te based TEs have become a hot spot in the research of low temperature thin film thermoelectric materials. In this paper, the methods for thermoelectric properties measurement and the development of different preparation processes of Bi-Te based thermoelectric thin films at home and abroad are introduced. The research aspects which need to be focused on the development of thin film materials are put forward, and the development direction of low-dimensional TEs is also described.
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