Effect of aluminum on the thermoelectric properties of nanostructured PbTe

In the present work, the effect of aluminum (Al) on the thermoelectric properties of PbTe is studied. Aluminum doped PbTe samples, fabricated by a ball milling and hot pressing, have Seebeck coefficients between −100 and −200 μV K−1 and electrical conductivities of (3.6–18) × 104 S m−1 at room temperature, which means that Al is an effective donor in PbTe. The first principle calculations clearly show an increase of the density of states close to the Fermi level in the conduction band due to Al doping, which averages up the energy and effective mass of electrons, resulting in enhancement of the Seebeck coefficient. The maximum figure-of-merit ZT of 1.2 is reached at 770 K in the Al0.03PbTe sample.