Journal of Inorganic Materials

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Solvothermal Synthesis and Electrical Transport Properties of Te-doped CoSb3 Skutterudites

MI Jian-Li, ZHAO Xin-Bing, ZHU Tie-Jun, CAO Gao-Shao   

  1. State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
  • Received:2006-09-10 Revised:2006-10-25 Published:2007-09-20 Online:2007-09-20

Abstract: Nanosized Te-doped skutterudites CoSb3-xTex (x=0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.4) were prepared by a solvothermal method using CoCl2, SbCl3 and pure telluride powder as precursors and NaBH4 as reductant. It is found that trace of other impurity phases such as CoTe2 are coexisted for x≥0.2. The size of synthesized CoSb3-xTex powders is about 40nm, and the grains are grown up to an average size of about 300nm after hot-pressing. Transport properties measurements indicate that the Te-doped CoSb3-xTex have n-type conduction. As the Te fraction increases, the values of electrical conductivity increase, while the absolute Seebeck coefficient values decrease. A maximum power factor of 2.3×10-3W·m-1·K-2 is obtained at 773K for CoSb2.8Te0.2.

Key words: skutterudite, solvothermal synthesis, Te-doped CoSb3, thermoelectric materials

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