Development of Nanostructured Bi2Te3 with High Thermoelectric Performance by Scalable Synthesis and Microstructure Manipulations

Nanostructuring of thermoelectric (TE) materials leads to improved energy conversion performance; however, it requires a perfect fit between the nanoprecipitates’ chemistry and crystal structure and those of the matrix. We synthesize bulk Bi2Te3 from molecular precursors and characterize their structure and chemistry using electron microscopy and analyze their TE transport properties in the range of 300–500 K. We find that synthesis from Bi2O3 + Na2TeO3 precursors results in n-type Bi2Te3 containing a high number density (Nv ∼ 2.45 × 1023 m–3) of Te-nanoprecipitates decorating the Bi2Te3 grain boundaries (GBs), which yield enhanced TE performance with a power factor (PF) of ∼19 μW cm–1 K–2 at 300 K. First-principles calculations validate the role of Te/Bi2Te3 interfaces in increasing the charge carrier concentration, density of states, and electrical conductivity. These optimized TE coefficients yield a promising TE figure of merit (zT) peak value of 1.30 at 450 K and an average zT of 1.14 from 300 to 500 K. This is one of the cutting-edge zT values recorded for n-type Bi2Te3 produced by chemical routes. We believe that this chemical synthesis strategy will be beneficial for future development of scalable n-type Bi2Te3 based devices.