Abstract
Oxide-based ceramics could be promising thermoelectric materials because of their thermal and chemical stability at high temperature. However, their mediocre electrical conductivity or high thermal conductivity is still a challenge for the use in commercial devices. Here, we report significantly suppressed thermal conductivity in SrTiO3-based thermoelectric ceramics via high-entropy strategy for the first time, and optimized electrical conductivity by defect engineering. In high-entropy (Ca0.2Sr0.2Ba0.2Pb0.2La0.2)TiO3 bulks, the minimum thermal conductivity can be 1.17 W/(m·K) at 923 K, which should be ascribed to the large lattice distortion and the huge mass fluctuation effect. The power factor can reach about 295 μW/(m·K2) by inducing oxygen vacancies. Finally, the ZT value of 0.2 can be realized at 873 K in this bulk sample. This approach proposed a new concept of high entropy into thermoelectric oxides, which could be generalized for designing high-performance thermoelectric oxides with low thermal conductivity.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Yu Xiao from Beihang University for samples’ thermal conductivity measurements. This work was financially supported by Basic Science Center Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 51788104, National Key Research Program of China under Grant No. 2016YFA0201003, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 51729201.
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Zheng, Y., Zou, M., Zhang, W. et al. Electrical and thermal transport behaviours of high-entropy perovskite thermoelectric oxides. J Adv Ceram 10, 377–384 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40145-021-0462-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40145-021-0462-5