Silver vacancy concentration engineering leading to the ultralow lattice thermal conductivity and improved thermoelectric performance of Ag_1-xInTe₂.

ABSTRACT: AgInTe₂ compound has not received enough recognition in thermoelectrics, possibly due to the fact that the presence of Te vacancy (V_Te) and antisite defect of In at Ag site (In_Ag) degrades its electrical conductivity. In this work, we prepared the Ag_1-xInTe₂ compounds with substoichiometric amounts of Ag and observed an ultralow lattice thermal conductivity (κ_L = 0.1 Wm^-1K^-1) for the sample at x = 0.15 and 814 K. This leads to more than 2-fold enhancement in the ZT value (ZT = 0.62) compared to the pristine AgInTe₂. In addition, we have traced the origin of the untralow κ_L using the Callaway model. The results attained in this work suggest that the engineering of the silver vacancy

SUBMITTER: Zhong Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6906449 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature