The renewed interest in thermoelectric power generation has largely focused on solid-state engineering of increasingly exotic materials. However, developing scalable syntheses while simplifying material processing has the potential to broaden the impact of wide-spread dissemination for waste/heat conversion. Herein, we describe printable Bi2Te3 nanoplatelet and the structure-property evolution of its thin films upon sintering with flash lamp. For this, the physical attributes of Bi2Te3, including robust optical absorbance, low thermal diffusivity and low melting point lends itself particularly well for photonic sintering. Upon flash exposure, we observe evolution from a thin film of discrete nanoplatelet subcomponents to a mesoscale mesh-like network with distinct crystalline regimes. The resultant film, with nanostructures consistent with pronounced melt-and-recrystallization within plane, also exhibit electrical connectivity and Seebeck response comparable to undoped Bi2Te3 derived from conventional means. Penultimately, in contrast to previous thermoelectrics assembled from Bi2Te3 nanoplatelets and particles, the photonic sintering method obviates the need for bulk-reformation from nanoplatelets via high-pressure arc/plasma-sintering to yield thermoelectric response. Ultimately, the photonic sintering method may provide a scalable solution method (“ink”) for conformal thin thermoelectric coatings on a variety of substrates with arbitrary geometry.

Flash Sintering of solution synthesized Bi2Te3 nanoplatelets

251st National Meeting (2016)

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