An ideal thermoelectric (TE) material would be a semiconductor with high electrical conductivity and low thermal conductivity. Introducing nanoscale heterostructures into the bulk TE matrix is one way of achieving this intuitively anomalous electron/phonon transport behavior. The heterostructured interfaces are expected to play a significant role in phonon scattering to reduce thermal conductivity and in the energy-dependent scattering of carriers to improve the Seebeck coefficient. However, a key problem in applying this strategy is how to stabilize the nanoscaled heterostructures at relatively high temperature.Here, we report an ALD approach to coat thin oxide layer to protect the undesired diffusions of the metallic atoms to the host matrix. The homogeneous metal-oxide heterostructures behaves surprisingly high power factor compared to single phased semiconductor. Besides, the thermal stability is improved by the oxide layer as well. This is potentially a promising approach to the next generation heterostructured thermoelectric materials.

Wet chemical hetero-structured semiconductors with nanoscaled inclusions: The thermal stabilities and thermoelectric properties

244th National Meeting (2012)

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