(645c) Facile Synthetic Approach for PbTe and CuFeS2 Nanocrystals and Their Preliminary Thermoelectric Device Setup

Recent years have witnessed increasing public concern on environmental issues caused by industrial operations^[1] and unsustainable consumption of fossil fuel^[2]. Thermoelectric (TE) materials are capable of converting waste heat into electricity, and are emerging as a promising alternative source of energy. When the dimensions of the material are reduced to nanometer scale, quantum confinement effects are introduced, which can alter the electronic structure^[3], resulting in an improvement of thermoelectric efficiency^[4].

    In this presentation, altaite phase PbTe^[5] and chalcopyrite phase CuFeS₂^[6] were synthesized using a facile solution-phase method. The average diameters of as-synthesized PbTe and CuFeS₂ nanocrystals are 13 ± 3 nm and 6.4 ± 0.5 nm, respectively. At the same time, both of them show outstanding thermoelectric properties (ZT of PbTe nanocrystals can reach 0.9, while ZT of CuFeS₂ is 77 times the value of bulk chalcopyrite). The success of functional thermoelectric devices through a simple low-temperature solution coating of nanocrystals on glass fibers suggests the possibility of combining the high performance with other attractive properties including flexibility, lightweight and shock resistance.

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[5] D. Liang, H. Yang, S. W. Finefrock and Y. Wu, Nano Lett., 2012, 12, 2140-2145.

[6] D. Liang, R. Ma, S. Jiao, G. Pang and S. Feng, Nanoscale, 2012, 4, 6265-6268.