Lattice Thermal Conductivity in Thermoelectric Materials

doi:10.15541/jim20180320

Abstract

Abstract:

With rapid development of sustainable energies and energy conversion technologies, application prospect of thermoelectric (TE) materials in power generation and cooling has received increasing attention. The requirement of improving TE materials with high figure of merit becomes much more important. How to obtain the low lattice thermal conductivity is one of the main concerns in TE materials. In this review, the influences of specific heat, phonon group velocity and relaxation time on the lattice thermal conductivity are discussed, respectively. Several typical features of TE materials with intrinsic low lattice thermal conductivity are introduced, such as strong anharmonicity, weak chemical bonds and complex primitive cells. Introducing multiscale phonon scatterings to reduce the lattice thermal conductivity of known TE materials is also presented and discussed, including but not limited to point defect scattering, dislocation scattering, boundary scattering, resonance scattering and electron-phonon scattering. In addition, some theoretical models of the minimum lattice thermal conductivity are analyzed, which has certain theoretical significance for rapid screening of TE materials with low lattice thermal conductivity. Finally, the efficient ways to obtain the low lattice thermal conductivity for TE property optimization are proposed.

Key words: thermoelectric materials, lattice thermal conductivity, specific heat, relaxation time, review

CLC Number:

TB34

SHEN Jia-Jun, FANG Teng, FU Tie-Zheng, XIN Jia-Zhan, ZHAO Xin-Bing, ZHU Tie-Jun. Lattice Thermal Conductivity in Thermoelectric Materials[J]. Journal of Inorganic Materials, 2019, 34(3): 260-268.

Figures/Tables 9

Fig.1 (a) Temperature dependence of the lattice thermal conductivity for Cu2-xSe[11] and (b) number of atoms in the primitive unit cell versus room temperature lattice thermal conductivity[12,13,14,15,16]

Fig. 2 (a) Schematic diagram of crystal structure for Ba8Ga16Ge30, (b) a simple spring model and (c) the corresponding dispersion relation of filled and unfilled clathrate[29]describing interaction between the host cages with a spring constant K1 and the guest atoms attached to the cages with a spring constant K2

Fig. 3 Grüneisen parameter versus room temperature lattice thermal conductivity[6, 22, 39-53]

Fig.4 (a) Phonon frequency dependence of spectral lattice thermal conductivity for (Nb0.6Ta0.4)0.8Ti0.2FeSb and Nb0.8Ti0.2FeSb, and (b) relationship between Ta content and lattice thermal conductivity/disorder parameter for (Nb0.6Ta0.4)0.8Ti0.2FeSb[70]

Fig. 5 (a) Inverse FFT images and strain mapping of dislocations in the Mg2Si0.5Sb0.5, and (b) lattice thermal conductivity comparison between Mg2Si1-xSbx and Mg2Si1-zSnz at room temperature[84]

Fig. 6 (a) Schematic diagram of crystal structure for BiSe and (b) lattice thermal conductivity comparison between Bi2Se3 and BiSe[88]

Fig. 7 (a) Schematic diagram of electron-phonon scattering and (b) comparison of experimental and calculated lattice thermal conductivities by Callaway Model for the silicon sample[93]

Fig. 8 (a) Schematic diagram of the difference between diffusion model and phonon model, and (b) comparison of calculated minimum lattice thermal conductivities by Cahill model and diffuson model

Fig. 9 Several strategies to obtain low lattice thermal conductivity

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