Flux-grown high performance thermoelectric materials with ultra low thermal conductivity

• Grant number: 18/17384-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: September 01, 2019
• End date: August 31, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Physics - Condensed Matter Physics
• Principal Investigator: Marcos de Abreu Avila
• Grantee: Shiva Kumar Singh
• Host Institution: Centro de Ciências Naturais e Humanas (CCNH). Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC). Ministério da Educação (Brasil). Santo André , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 17/10581-1 - Emergent phenomena in reduced dimension systems, AP.ESP

Abstract

Thermoelectric (TE) materials are basically those capable of transforming waste heat into useful electric energy through the Seebeck effect, or reversing heat flow by applying a voltage through the Peltier effect. The efficiency of heat”electricity conversion is quantified by the nondimensional TE figure of merit ZT. Among several approaches that have been investigated towards increasing the ZT of materials above the presently available range, the reduction in dimensionality has proved to be quite promising. The Quantum Materials Group (GMQ) at UFABC has been active for the last decade in the discovery and development of novel complex TE materials, grown in singlecrystalline form by metallic flux and based on another successful concept known as "Phonon-Glass, Electron-Crystal" (PGEC), which seeks to suppress the heat conduction by scattering phonons without affecting the electronic transport. In this project, we propose to associate the expertise acquired by the GMQ group in the development of single crystals of novel TE materials with the LMBT group's expertise in obtaining nanofilaments of materials that can be prepared by flux growth, in order to assess the extent to which the two described approaches can be combined to achieve significant enhancements of ZT. Nanofilaments of various families of complex intermetallic compounds such as A8X16X'30, RT2Zn20, A14MSb11, A11MSb9, RT4Sb12, and other flux-grown TE materials such as FeGa3 e MTe2 will be prepared and characterized for their structural and TE properties.

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

SINGH, SHIVA KUMAR; MUNEVAR, JULIAN; MENDONCA-FERREIRA, LETICIE; AVILA, MARCOS A. A.. Next-Generation Quantum Materials for Thermoelectric Energy Conversion. CRYSTALS, v. 13, n. 7, p. 27-pg., 2023-07-01. (17/10581-1, 18/17384-0)