Motivated by the reported colossal Seebeck coefficient of bulk-FeSb2 below 20 K, we have developed a wet chemistry route towards nanoscaled FeSb2 with a phase purity of > 95%, confirmed by 57Fe-M��bauer spectroscopy and X-ray powder diffraction (XRD). As expected, nuclear inelastic scattering (NIS) on the nano-FeSb2 powder sample revealed a reduced thermal conductivity. In order to perform transport measurements the powder was pressed into a pellet with spark plasma sintering (SPS) under Ar atmosphere and densities over 80% with respect to the refined lattice parameters were obtained. Transport measurements of the pellets showed a maximum of the thermopower around 20 K, with a slightly decreased absolute value. By EDX analysis and X-ray diffraction studies of the obtained pellets we could show that antimony sweating during the sintering process causes the drop of the thermopower and further sintering studies are still running.Furthermore, we could show that our optimized wet chemistry route can be used for the synthesis of several other binary transition metal antimonides, e.g. FeSb, CoSb, NiSb and Cu2Sb including the thermoelectric promising skutterudite CoSb3.

Wet chemical synthesis toward nanoparticular thermoelectric antimonides FeSb<sub>2</sub> and CoSb<sub>3</sub>

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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Wet chemical synthesis toward nanoparticular thermoelectric antimonides FeSb2 and CoSb3

Wet chemical synthesis toward nanoparticular thermoelectric antimonides FeSb₂ and CoSb₃