Heavy-Fermion YbAl3 Materials: One-step Synthesis and Enhanced Thermoelectric Performance

doi:10.15541/jim20220318

Abstract

Abstract:

Microstructure plays a key role in tuning physical properties of materials. Here YbAl₃ materials with high figure of merit ZT of 0.35 at 300 K was directly synthesized with Yb and Al pure powders through one-step spark plasma sintering process in 10 min. The excellent thermoelectric performance is attributed to the simultaneous reduction in the lattice thermal conductivity by 47% and electronic thermal conductivity by 27% at 300 K. The remarkable decrease in the electronic thermal conductivity is ascribed to the enhanced scattering of electrons by nanocrystals with 5-20 nm in diameter, strip-like non-crystal with several nanometers in width and various atomic-scale distortions. The substantial decline in the lattice thermal conductivity originates from the enhanced scattering of phonons due to multi-scale microstructures spanning from nanoscale to mesoscale. This work demonstrates that one-step spark plasma sintering process is an efficient strategy to rapidly synthesize YbAl₃ materials with multi-scale microstructures and enhanced thermoelectric performance.

Key words: YbAl₃thermoelectric materials, one-step synthesis, microstructure, thermoelectric performance

CLC Number:

TQ174

HE Danqi, WEI Mingxu, LIU Ruizhi, TANG Zhixin, ZHAI Pengcheng, ZHAO Wenyu. Heavy-Fermion YbAl₃ Materials: One-step Synthesis and Enhanced Thermoelectric Performance[J]. Journal of Inorganic Materials, 2023, 38(5): 577-582.

Figures/Tables 5

Fig. 1 XRD patterns of SPS1, SPS2 and MQA-SPS samples

Fig. 2 Microstructures of SPS1, SPS2 and MQA-SPS samples (a-c) FESEM images of (a) MQA-SPS, (b) SPS1, and (c) SPS2; (d) Enlarged FESEM image of the rectangular region in (c)

Fig. 3 Multi-scale microstructures in SPS1 (a) HRTEM image of YbAl3 nanocrystals with 5-20 nm in diameter; (b) HRTEM image of nanoscale strip-like noncrystal in YbAl3 crystals; (c, d) HRTEM images of high-density distortions in YbAl3 crystals with insets showing IFFT images of the marked regions

Fig. 4 Temperature dependence of (a) electrical conductivity and (b) Seebeck coefficient for SPS1, SPS2 and MQA-SPS with inset showing the temperature dependence of power factor

Fig. 5 Temperature dependences of (a) thermal conductivity, (b) carrier thermal conductivity, (c) lattice thermal conductivity, and (d) ZT values for the samples for SPS1, SPS2 and MQA-SPS

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Heavy-Fermion YbAl₃ Materials: One-step Synthesis and Enhanced Thermoelectric Performance

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