Phonon scattering at grain boundaries in heavily doped fine-grained silicon–germanium alloys

Rowe, Daniel B.; Shukla, Vishnu; Savvides, N.

doi:10.1038/290765a0

Cited by 254 publications

(168 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Localized rattling atoms are also found in clathrates, such as Sr 8 Ga 16 Ge 39 and Ba 8 Ga 16 Ge 30 [13]. These compounds have cubic structures, the same as in the type-I ice clathrates.…”

Section: Resonant Scattering By Localized Rattling Atomsmentioning

confidence: 85%

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Development of novel thermoelectric materials by reduction of lattice thermal conductivity

Wan

Wang

et al. 2010

Science and Technology of Advanced Materials

153

120

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Thermal conductivity is one of the key parameters in the figure of merit of thermoelectric materials. Over the past decade, most progress in thermoelectric materials has been made by reducing their thermal conductivity while preserving their electrical properties. The phonon scattering mechanisms involved in these strategies are reviewed here and divided into three groups, including (i) disorder or distortion of unit cells, (ii) resonant scattering by localized rattling atoms and (iii) interface scattering. In addition, we propose construction of a 'natural superlattice' in thermoelectric materials by intercalating an MX layer into the van der Waals gap of a layered T X 2 structure which has a general formula of (M X ) 1+x (T X 2 ) n (M = Pb, Bi, Sn, Sb or a rare earth element; T = Ti, V, Cr, Nb or Ta; X = S or Se and n = 1, 2, 3). We demonstrate that one of the intercalation compounds (SnS) 1.2 (TiS 2 ) 2 has better thermoelectric properties compared with pure TiS 2 in the direction parallel to the layers, as the electron mobility is maintained while the phonon transport is significantly suppressed owing to the reduction in the transverse phonon velocities.

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“…Localized rattling atoms are also found in clathrates, such as Sr 8 Ga 16 Ge 39 and Ba 8 Ga 16 Ge 30 [13]. These compounds have cubic structures, the same as in the type-I ice clathrates.…”

Section: Resonant Scattering By Localized Rattling Atomsmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…Compared with single crystals of SiGe alloys, polycrystalline SiGe with grains of the order of 1 µm showed higher ZT values [16].…”

Section: Interface Scatteringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of novel thermoelectric materials by reduction of lattice thermal conductivity

Wan

Wang

et al. 2010

Science and Technology of Advanced Materials

153

120

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…One is to enhance the Seebeck coefficient or the PF using band structure engineering methods, [5] such as modifying the electronic density of states and Fermi energy through doping heteroatoms, reducing crystal symmetry to achieve high band edge degeneracy, [6][7][8] etc. The other is to reduce thermal conductivity using methods such as nanostructuring, [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] alloying, [14,[22][23][24][25][26] etc. These strategies have achieved significant progress in the past decade.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Chemical Trends of Electronic Properties of Two-Dimensional Halide Perovskites and Their Potential Applications for Electronics and Optoelectronics

2016

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Current thermoelectric (TE) materials often have low performance or contain less abundant and/or toxic elements, thus limiting their large-scale applications. Therefore, new TE materials with high efficiency and low cost are strongly desirable. Here we demonstrate that, SiS and SiSe monolayers made from non-toxic and earth-abundant elements intrinsically have low thermal conductivities arising from their low-frequency optical phonon branches with large overlaps with acoustic phonon modes, which is similar to the state-of-the-art experimentally demonstrated material SnSe with a layered structure. Together with high thermal power factors due to their two-dimensional nature, they show promising TE performances with large figure of merit (ZT) values exceeding 1 or 2 over a wide range of temperatures. We establish some basic understanding of identifying layered materials with low thermal conductivities, which can guide and stimulate the search and study of other layered materials for TE applications.2 Thermoelectric materials have great potential for novel energy and environmental applications and have been extensively studied recently. The performance of a TE material is usually evaluated by the dimensionless figure of merit, which is denoted as ZT and defined as ZT = (S / ) , where S, σ, κ and T are the Seebeck coefficient, the electrical conductivity, the thermal conductivity (including both electronic contribution and lattice contribution ), and the average working temperature, respectively. [1][2][3][4] The product S σ is also known as the power factor (PF). To be an ideal TE material with high heat-to-electric conversion efficiency, a high ZT value, i.e., larger than unity, is required.Currently, two strategies are usually considered to enhance ZT of a TE material. One is to enhance the Seebeck coefficient or the PF using band structure engineering methods, [5] such as modifying the electronic density of states and Fermi energy through doping heteroatoms, reducing crystal symmetry to achieve high band edge degeneracy, [6][7][8] etc. The other is to reduce thermal conductivity using methods such as nanostructuring, [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] alloying, [14,[22][23][24][25][26] etc. These strategies have achieved significant progress in the past decade. However, most of now-existing TE materials, including PbTe, Bi 2 Te 3 and complex structure based TE materials, [3] strongly rely on heavy elements and/or rare-earth metals, which often have low abundance or are toxic, [3] thus limiting the large-scale employment of TE materials. Consequently, it will be of great importance to explore new TE materials not only with a high maximum ZT over a wide range of temperatures, but also made from non-toxic and earth-abundant elements.Recently, those materials with layered structures have shown such promise. As an experimentally demonstrated state-of-the-art thermoelectric material, SnSe has a simple layered structure similar to black phosphorus and only contains earth-abundant and non-toxic ...

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“…In nanostructures, since the size of the system is equivalent to the mean free path (MFP) of the carrier, in order to more clearly understand the phenomenon of thermal conductivity we must consider the ballistic transport of phonons without describing their behavior as a diffusion process. Ballistic phonon transport, as well as characteristic phonon transport due to scattering caused by the structure, has been reported in various structures including atomic scale carbon nanotubes 1) , graphene 2) , semiconductor super lattices 3,4) , structures containing nano particles 5,6) , porous structures 7,8) , nanowires 9) and phononic crystal (PnC) structures [10][11][12][13][14][15][16] . Since the thermal conductivity in nanostructures is system-dependent, using certain materials it is possible to fabricate monolithic devices with various thermal conductivities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Control of Phonon Transport by Phononic Crystals and Application to Thermoelectric Materials

Nomura

2016

Mater. Trans.

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Phonon transport and thermodynamic properties of nanostructured materials have been investigated and utilized to improve thermoelectric performance for various materials. In nanostructures, phonon transport is completely different from that in bulk materials and results in dramatic enhancement in the thermoelectric performance. This article reviews the impact of nanostructuring on the phonon transport and mainly focuses on phononic crystal nanostructures, in which the wave nature of phonons also plays an important role. We demonstrate that it is important to ef ciently scatter thermal phonons, which distribute to wide range of frequencies, with different phonon scattering mechanisms in the spatial domain. We also demonstrate an enhancement of thermoelectric property of polysilicon thin lms by phononic crystal patterning.

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Phonon scattering at grain boundaries in heavily doped fine-grained silicon–germanium alloys

Cited by 254 publications

References 10 publications

Development of novel thermoelectric materials by reduction of lattice thermal conductivity

Development of novel thermoelectric materials by reduction of lattice thermal conductivity

Chemical Trends of Electronic Properties of Two-Dimensional Halide Perovskites and Their Potential Applications for Electronics and Optoelectronics

Control of Phonon Transport by Phononic Crystals and Application to Thermoelectric Materials

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