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A1: Low temperature materials
Applied pressure strongly influences on thermoelectric (TE) properties of materials because of changing their electronic band structure under compression. So, it seems to be of interest to investigate the impacts of pressure application for thermoelectricity.
In the present work the behavior of TE and electrical conductivity of Bi2Te3-based compounds was investigated under high pressure application up to 20 GPa at room temperature using an automated high-pressure set-up (mini-press) operating miniature anvil-type high-pressure cell with anvils made of synthetic diamonds and hard-alloys [1]. The results gathered for a set of materials with p- and n-type of electrical conduction allowed to select the p-n pairs showing the thermoelectric power factor enhancement in similar pressure ranges. A prototype model of thermo-element with p-, n-pellets that are being compressed between miniature boron-nitride anvils has been experimentally created and examined. The examination of the performance of this TE element showed the improvement of the power factor under high-pressure impact. We discuss possible applications of applied high pressure for thermoelectric devices.
This work was supported by the RAS (code “Flow”) and in part by the Presidium of the RAS (project no. 12-P-2-1004 for the Ural Branch, RAS, program of basic research “Matter at high energy densities”), and by the Oriented Basic Research Project of the Ural Branch of RAS (project no. 13-2-032-YaTS), and by RFBR, research project No. 14-08-31023 mol_a.
Reference
[1] V. V. Shchennikov, S. V. Ovsyannikov, A. Y. Manakov. J. Phys. Chem. Solids 71, 1168 (2010).