Date of Award

12-2009

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Legacy Department

Materials Science and Engineering

Committee Chair/Advisor

Drymiotis, Fivos R.

Committee Member

Tritt , Terry M.

Committee Member

Brown , Philip J.

Committee Member

Luo , Jian

Committee Member

Zdyrko , Bogdan

Abstract

Sustainable energy research is currently on the forefront of scientific exploration and energy conservation and the development of new energy production techniques are both crucial for our long lasting stable future. Accordingly, thermoelectric materials will be a significant energy conservation and production source. The state-of -the-art thermoelectric materials can be used to collect the wasted heat and converted to power, which is the future for the green power generation.
PbTe is considered a state-of-the-art thermoelectric material, which has been extensively studied. It forms in the NaCl structure and it is a semiconductor with a room temperature gap value of 0.29 eV. Ag and Se was chosen to dope into the PbTe system to form (PbTe)(AgxSe). The hope was that the presence of nano-scale inhomogeneities would lead to a significant reduction in the thermal conductivity and a significant improvement of the thermoelectric Figure-of-merit with respect to the stoichiometric PbTe. With the result of PbTe (AgxSe), the similar system CuxAg3-xSbSeTe2 alloy were doped to further reduce the thermal conductivity and improve the Figure-of-merit ZT.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.