Thermoelectricity Generation and Electron–Magnon Scattering in a Natural Chalcopyrite Mineral from a Deep‐Sea Hydrothermal Vent

Abstract

Current high-performance thermoelectric materials require elaborate doping and synthesis procedures,particularly in regardtothe artificial structure,and the underlying thermoelectric mechanisms are still poorly understood. Here,w e report that an atural chalcopyrite mineral, Cu 1+x Fe 1Àx S 2 , obtained from ad eep-sea hydrothermal vent can directly generate thermoelectricity.T he resistivity displayed an excellent semiconducting character,a nd al arge thermoelectric power and high power factor were found in the low xr egion. Notably,electron-magnon scattering and alarge effective mass was detected in this region, thus suggesting that the strong coupling of doped carriers and antiferromagnetic spins resulted in the natural enhancement of thermoelectric properties during mineralization reactions.T he present findings demonstrate the feasibility of thermoelectric energy generation and electron/hole carrier modulation with natural materials that are abundant in the Earths crust.

High Thermoelectric Performance of Bornite through Control of the Cu(II) Content and Vacancy Concentration

“…0.8 W m -1 K -1 ) thermal conductivity of Cu 5.04 Fe 0.9 S 4 is attributed to the presence of appreciable amounts of a chalcopyrite impurity, for which the thermal conductivity is in excess of 6 W m -1 K -1 . Although chalcopyrite has a reasonably high power factor at relatively low temperatures, 13 we have found that samples with high levels of chalcopyrite impurities have significantly higher thermal conductivities, and hence the best thermoelectric performances are always found for samples within the single-phase regions, as determined by powder X-ray diffraction. Table 2).…”

“…Much of the recent research effort has focused on chalcogenides and there has been a growing realisation that mineral-type phases offer considerable potential as earthabundant thermoelectrics. [9][10][11][12][13][14][15] For example, tetrahedrites have been shown to be promising p-type materials, reaching maximum figures of merit, ZT > 1, at elevated temperatures. 16,17 Similarly, work by Snyder et.…”

Manipulating the Ge Vacancies and Ge Precipitates through Cr Doping for Realizing the High‐Performance GeTe Thermoelectric Material

“…to scatter more phonon, and exploring new unique structures with intrinsically low κ l , which contain strong lattice anharmonicity, low sound velocity, or liquid‐like ions. [ 18–22 ] On the other side, previously effective strategies and concepts have been proposed to improve the power factor, such as modulation doping, [ 23,24 ] magnetic enhancement, [ 25–27 ] band engineering, [ 28–32 ] energy filtering effect, [ 33–36 ] etc. However, it is worth to mention that a realization of the high ZT strongly rely on achieving optimized carrier concentration despite using the strategies above.…”

Natural Radioactive Environments as Sources of Local Disequilibrium for the Emergence of Life

“…For the emergence of life in alkaline hydrothermal vents, such as those in Lost City Hydrothermal Fields, some authors have proposed an analogy with the modern biological electrochemical-driven mechanism, though replacing complex enzyme machinery with inorganic structures. These catalytic converters of free energy are driven by pH, electrochemical and thermal gradients, and are mainly based on mineral catalysts in hydrothermal vents environments (Nakamura et al, 2010;Ang et al, 2015).…”

“…and driven by pH, electrochemical gradients between the hydrothermal fluid and early ocean Ang et al, 2015;Yamamoto et al, 2017;Barge et al, 2018;Ooka et al, 2019). Thus, this could be a requisite for the emergence of life in Hadean Earth.…”