Extremely Fast and Cheap Densification of Cu2S by Induction Melting Method

Abstract

The aim of this work was to obtain dense Cu2S superionic thermoelectric materials, homogeneous in terms of phase and chemical composition, using a very fast and cheap induction-melting technique. The chemical composition was investigated via scanning electron microscopy (SEM) combined with an energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) method, and the phase composition was established by X-ray diffraction (XRD). The thermoelectric figure of merit ZT was determined on the basis of thermoelectric transport properties, i.e., Seebeck coefficient, electrical and thermal conductivity in the temperature range of 300–923 K. The obtained values of the ZT parameter are comparable with those obtained using the induction hot pressing (IHP) technique and about 30–45% higher in the temperature range of 773–923 K in comparison with Cu2S samples densified with the spark plasma sintering (SPS) technique.

Enhancing Conversion Efficiency of Direct Ink Write Printed Copper (I) Sulfide Thermoelectrics via Sulfur Infusion Process

“…The rapid jumps in the thermal conductivity plot are propagations from the specific heat data and these are most likely due to phase changes observed at those temperature points. Compared to the literature results for fully dense samples (κ ~0.3-0.6 W-m −1 K −1 @ RT) [43], the values recorded here follow the same trend as expected. The average pore area was ~106 µm 2 (Figure S4) which is beneficial in increasing the overall figure of merit.…”