Enhanced thermoelectric figure-of-merit in thermally robust, nanostructured superlattices based on SrTiO3
Type
ArticleAuthors
Abutaha, Anas I.
Sarath Kumar, S. R.
Li, Kun
Dehkordi, Arash Mehdizadeh
Tritt, Terry M.
Alshareef, Husam N.

KAUST Department
Core LabsFunctional Nanomaterials and Devices Research Group
Imaging and Characterization Core Lab
Material Science and Engineering Program
Physical Science and Engineering (PSE) Division
Date
2015-03-09Online Publication Date
2015-03-09Print Publication Date
2015-03-24Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/564112
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Thermoelectric (TE) metal oxides overcome crucial disadvantages of traditional heavy-metal-alloy-based TE materials, such as toxicity, scarcity, and instability at high temperatures. Here, we report the TE properties of metal oxide superlattices, composed from alternating layers of 5% Pr3+-doped SrTiO3-δ (SPTO) and 20% Nb5+-doped SrTiO3-δ (STNO) fabricated using pulsed laser deposition (PLD). Excellent stability is established for these superlattices by maintaining the crystal structure and reproducing the TE properties after long-time (20 h) annealing at high temperature (∼1000 K). The introduction of oxygen vacancies as well as extrinsic dopants (Pr3+ and Nb5+), with different masses and ionic radii, at different lattice sites in SPTO and STNO layers, respectively, results in a substantial reduction of thermal conductivity via scattering a wider range of phonon spectrum without limiting the electrical transport and thermopower, leading to an enhancement in the figure-of-merit (ZT). The superlattice composed of 20 SPTO/STNO pairs, 8 unit cells of each layer, exhibits a ZT value of 0.46 at 1000 K, which is the highest among SrTiO3-based thermoelectrics. © 2015 American Chemical Society.Citation
Abutaha, A. I., Kumar, S. R. S., Li, K., Dehkordi, A. M., Tritt, T. M., & Alshareef, H. N. (2015). Enhanced Thermoelectric Figure-of-Merit in Thermally Robust, Nanostructured Superlattices Based on SrTiO3. Chemistry of Materials, 27(6), 2165–2171. doi:10.1021/acs.chemmater.5b00144Sponsors
Research reported in this publication was supported by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).Publisher
American Chemical Society (ACS)Journal
Chemistry of Materialsae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1021/acs.chemmater.5b00144