One-step rapid synthesis of Cu2Se with enhanced thermoelectric properties

Currently, thermoelectric devices are receiving an immense attention from the renewable energy community due to their environment friendliness. We report a single step facile arc-melting method for developing Cu2Se thermoelectric material, which eliminates the need of expensive and time taking sintering process. The structural and thermoelectric properties measurement indicates that the proposed method is an alternative to the other reported methods for instance ball-milling followed by spark plasma sintering (SPS) with a great improvement in their efficiency. Based upon the optimized power factor and decreased total thermal conductivity, a higher figure-of-merit (ZT) value of 1.46 at 873 K was obtained from the arc-melted sample which is about 70% larger than that of its counterpart prepared through ball-milling followed by SPS process. This remarkable enhancement in the ZT value through a facile synthesis method opens up an avenue for cheaper and fast processing of Cu2Se and related materials.