Thermoelectric composites on the base of PbTe with nanoiclusions of colloidal silver

Abstract

Formation of thermocouples by pressing powder of thermoelectric material with micro- and nano- size range creates large internal borders for additional phonon scattering. However, it need not only reduce the thermal conductivity, but also increase the Seebeck coefficient to improve the thermoelectric properties of material. For this case, around thermoelectric grain PbTe of the size of (0.5-1.0) micrometers prompted to create nano-channels for the stream of an electric current. In this paper was development technology of the conductive nano-channels on the base of colloidal Silver. It was finding that the introduction of Ag nanoparticles (size = 50 nm), not only reduces the thermal conductivity, but also increases the Seebeck coefficient after additional throttling of electrons on the barriers of Silver nanoparticles. Thermal conductivity of (0.06-0.2) W/(m·K) has been achieved in the case of the scattering of medium-wave phonons (MWP). The absolute value of Seebeck coefficient in these conditions increases up to 340 μV/K.