TY - JOUR
T1 - Scandium-doped zinc cadmium oxide as a new stable n-type oxide thermoelectric material
AU - Han, Li
AU - Christensen, Dennis Valbjørn
AU - Bhowmik, Arghya
AU - Simonsen, Søren Bredmose
AU - Le, Thanh Hung
AU - Abdellahi, Ebtisam
AU - Chen, Y. Z.
AU - Van Nong, Ngo
AU - Linderoth, Søren
AU - Pryds, Nini
N1 - This article is published Open Access as part of the RSC's Gold for Gold initiative, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - Scandium-doped zinc cadmium oxide (Sc-doped ZnCdO) is proposed as a new n-type oxide thermoelectric material. The material is sintered in air to maintain the oxygen stoichiometry and avoid instability issues. The successful alloying of CdO with ZnO at a molar ratio of 1 : 9 significantly reduced the thermal conductivity by up to 7-fold at room temperature. By carefully selecting the Sc-dopant concentrations, a high power factor of 7.1 × 10−4 W m−1 K−2 at 1173 K could be obtained. Therefore, the highest ZT ∼ 0.3 at 1173 K was achieved for the Zn0.9Cd0.1Sc0.01O1.015 sample, and it has so far one of the highest ZT values among those reported for ZnO based thermoelectric materials over the temperature range, e.g., its ZT value at 300 K, which is 0.012, is over 1 order of magnitude higher than that of the state-of-the-art nanostructured Al-doped ZnO, which is 0.0013. It suggests that this material is a good candidate for improving the overall conversion efficiencies in oxide thermoelectric modules. Meanwhile, Sc-doped ZnCdO is robust in air at high temperatures, whereas other n-type materials, such as Al-doped ZnO, will experience rapid degradation of their electrical conductivity and ZT.
AB - Scandium-doped zinc cadmium oxide (Sc-doped ZnCdO) is proposed as a new n-type oxide thermoelectric material. The material is sintered in air to maintain the oxygen stoichiometry and avoid instability issues. The successful alloying of CdO with ZnO at a molar ratio of 1 : 9 significantly reduced the thermal conductivity by up to 7-fold at room temperature. By carefully selecting the Sc-dopant concentrations, a high power factor of 7.1 × 10−4 W m−1 K−2 at 1173 K could be obtained. Therefore, the highest ZT ∼ 0.3 at 1173 K was achieved for the Zn0.9Cd0.1Sc0.01O1.015 sample, and it has so far one of the highest ZT values among those reported for ZnO based thermoelectric materials over the temperature range, e.g., its ZT value at 300 K, which is 0.012, is over 1 order of magnitude higher than that of the state-of-the-art nanostructured Al-doped ZnO, which is 0.0013. It suggests that this material is a good candidate for improving the overall conversion efficiencies in oxide thermoelectric modules. Meanwhile, Sc-doped ZnCdO is robust in air at high temperatures, whereas other n-type materials, such as Al-doped ZnO, will experience rapid degradation of their electrical conductivity and ZT.
U2 - 10.1039/C6TA03126A
DO - 10.1039/C6TA03126A
M3 - Journal article
SN - 2050-7488
VL - 4
SP - 12221
EP - 12231
JO - Journal of Materials Chemistry A
JF - Journal of Materials Chemistry A
IS - 31
ER -