Fe/PbTe joining by plasma-activated sintering.

Challenges and Progress in Contact Development for PbTe‐based Thermoelectrics

“…These are the primary selection criteria for thermoelectric materials in general [24,25] . For the development of PbTe‐based thermoelectric modules, various metals, alloys, and compounds have been tested as contact materials, including Al, [38–40] Ti, [41] Fe, [19–23,29,31,38,42–53] Co, [48,54–57] Co 80 Fe 20 , [14,17,31,58–61] Ni, [29,38,48,49,51,54,56,57,62–67] Cu, [56,57,68] Nb, [69,70] Mo, [29,49,70,71] Ag, [68,72] Ta, [18,70,73,74] and W [18,70,73–76] as well as SnTe, [29,38,43,62] metallic glass, [41] stainless steel [22,77,78] and FeTe [79] . The CTE of PbTe and candidate contact materials are listed in Table 1.…”

“…Fe is a thoroughly studied contact material for PbTe thermoelectric modules [19–23,29,31,38,42–53] . The difference in CTE of metallic Fe (∼11.8×10 −6 K −1 at 300 K [90] ) and PbTe is large.…”

“…[17,37] These are the primary selection criteria for thermoelectric materials in general. [24,25] For the development of PbTe-based thermoelectric modules, various metals, alloys, and compounds have been tested as contact materials, including Al, [38][39][40] Ti, [41] Fe, [19][20][21][22][23]29,31,38,[42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53] Co, [48,[54][55][56][57] Co 80 Fe 20 , [14,17,31,[58][59][60][61] Ni, [29,38,48,49,51,54,56,57,[62][63]…”

“…Fe is a thoroughly studied contact material for PbTe thermoelectric modules. [19][20][21][22][23]29,31,38,[42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53] The difference in CTE of metallic Fe (~11.8 × 10 À 6 K À 1 at 300 K [90] ) and PbTe is large. Nevertheless, for contacts of Fe and n-type PbTe, low 1 c have been reported in the range of ~1 × 10 À 10 Ω m 2 -10 × 10 À 10 Ω m 2 .…”