Cu2SnS3 (CTS) is a medium-temperature, ecofriendly,
p-type thermoelectric material known for phonon-glass-electron-crystal
characteristic. In the present work, ordered and disordered CTS samples
were prepared from elemental powders, and their electronic and vibrational
properties were systematically investigated by experimental methods
and ab initio calculations. The disordered CTS polymorph
presents a higher power factor, PF ∼ 1.5 μW/K2 cm, than the ordered and stable phase, PF ∼ 0.5 μW/K2 cm, above 700 K, as an effect of a smaller band gap and higher
carrier concentration. Most importantly, the disordered CTS shows
an ultralow thermal conductivity, k ∼ 0.4–0.2
W/m K, as compared to ordered, k ∼ 1.0–0.4W/m
K, in the temperature range of 323–723 K. The combined effect
of a higher PF and lower k results in a higher figure
of merit, zT ∼ 0.5 at 723 K, obtained for
disordered CTS without resorting to chemical alloying. It turns out
that structural disorder contributes to the suppression of thermal
conductivity. While group velocity of acoustic phonons, as shown both
by experiments and ab initio calculations, is similar
in the two polymorphs, a strong anharmonicity characterizes the disordered
CTS, resulting in the presence of low-lying optical modes acting as
traps for heat transmission. Density functional theory/density functional
perturbation theory simulations and nuclear inelastic scattering combined
with high-resolution diffraction studies of the lattice parameters
reveal details of phonon–phonon interactions in CTS with unprecedented
effectiveness.
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