In this study, we explore various electrode materials (Au, Ti, and Sb) for use as contact materials on Bi2Te3 and Sb2Te3 thermoelectric films. Using the transmission line method (TLM), we measured the specific resistivity of the contacts, which showed that Au has the lowest contact resistivity for both the thermoelectric films (after annealing): 2.7 × 10−10 Ω m2 for Bi2Te3 and 2.9 × 10−11 Ω m2 for Sb2Te3. The specific contact resistivity data suggest that the dominant factor for the contact properties is interface states. After annealing, the contact resistivity does not change much for the Bi2Te3 contacts while it drops greatly for the Sb2Te3 ones. Analysis of the carrier transport mechanism across the contacts discloses that changes in the carrier concentration in the thermoelectric films after annealing are responsible for the different behaviors.

This paper investigates the effects of the Sb content (x) on (Bi(1-x)Sb(x))2Te3 thermoelectric films with x changing widely from 0 (Sb2Te3) to 1 (Bi2Te3). First, the XRD analysis discloses that with the Sb content (x) increasing, the phase changed gradually from Bi2Te3 to Sb2Te3 as Sb atoms replaced substitutionally Bi atoms. Further microstructure analysis reveals that an extensive grain growth occurred during post-annealing for the samples with high Sb contents. According to the measurement of electrical and thermoelectric properties, the polarity of the charge carrier and Seebeck coefficient switched n-type to p-type in the range of x = 0.45~0.63. For the n-type samples, the power factor is highest when x = 0.18 around 46.01 μW/K(2) whereas Sb2Te3, for the p-type samples, shows the highest value, 62.48 μW/K(2)cm.