PDF/月刊誌論文/code:pg_0509_04 マテリアル インテグレーション 2005年9月号
ELECTRONIC CERAMICS 世界の熱電変換材料(1)

Development of Bi2Te3-Based Sintered Materials with High Thermoelectric Performance
■著者
Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, State Key Laboratory of High Performance Ceramics and Superfine Microstructure　Lidong Chen

■要約
Bi2Te3-based materials have been widely used in thermoelectric (TE) cooling module because of their excellent thermoelectric performance at around room temperature. However, they have the disadvantage of poor mechanical properties, which results in high fabrication cost and greatly restricts the applications such as in the miniature thermoelectric modules. The development of Bi2Te3-based materials with both high thermoelectric performance and high mechanical strength has been attracting great attention in the TE industrial field. In the present study, n-type and p-type Bi2Te3-based sintered materials with highly preferred grain orientations have been fabricated by spark plasma sintering (SPS) technique. The obtained textured Bi2Te3-based materials show both a high mechanical strength (as 80MPa in bending strength which is 7 to 8 times as that of the melted ingot materials) and a significantly improved thermoelectric performance. The dimensionless figures of merit (ZT) of the sintered materials for p-type and n-type reach 1.22 and 0.98, respectively, which are comparable to those of the zone-melted ingots.