TiO2 is widely available as a chemically stable
and
harmless material. Recently, it has received a great deal of attention
as a practical thermoelectric material. In this work, we studied the
effects of aluminum (Al) doping concentration and lattice parameter
on the thermoelectric properties of TiO2 at both room and
high temperatures (475 °C). We found that the Al doping leads
to a compression in the lattice constant and an increase in carrier
concentration and consequently increases the electrical conductivity
in the TiO2. We observed that the Al-doped TiO2 thin film shows a negative Seebeck coefficient and its value linearly
decreases with increasing electrical conductivity. This result indicates
that the Seebeck effect is developed by entropy-driven thermally assisted
charge diffusion between low- and high-temperature surfaces. Further
studies found that doping-induced reduction on entropy difference
through electrical conductivity is accountable for the decrease of
the Seebeck effect in the Al-doped TiO2. However, the Al
doping can lead to phonon scattering at grain boundary interfaces
and consequently decreases thermal conductivity. Therefore, the Al
doping can essentially function as a mechanism to separately adjust
electrical and thermal conductivities in the Al-doped TiO2. With Al doping, we obtained a maximal figure of merit (Z value) to be 1.30 at 475 °C and 0.48 At 23 °C
from the Al-doped TiO2 at the doping concentration of 3%.
The comparison of Z values between room and high
temperatures confirms that thermally assisted charge diffusion and
phonon scattering are two critical parameters for the development
of efficient thermoelectric function in the Al-doped TiO2.