Strategic Design and Mechanistic Understanding of Vacancy-Filling Heusler Thermoelectric Semiconductors

Doping narrow-gap semiconductors is a well-established approach for designing efficient thermoelectric materials. Semiconducting half-Heusler (HH) and full-Heusler (FH) compounds have garnered significant interest within the thermoelectric field, yet the number of exceptional candidates remains relatively small. It is recently shown that the vacancy-filling approach is a viable strategy for expanding the Heusler family. Here, a range of near-semiconducting Heuslers, TiFexCuySb, creating a composition continuum that adheres to the Slater-Pauling electron counting rule are theoretically designed and experimentally synthesized. The stochastic and incomplete occupation of vacancy sites within these materials imparts continuously changing electrical conductivities, ranging from a good semiconductor with low carrier concentration in the endpoint TiFe0.67Cu0.33Sb to a heavily doped p-type semiconductor with a stoichiometry of TiFe1.00Cu0.20Sb. The optimal thermoelectric performance is experimentally observed in the intermediate compound TiFe0.80Cu0.28Sb, achieving a peak figure of merit of 0.87 at 923 K. These findings demonstrate that vacancy-filling Heusler compounds offer substantial opportunities for developing advanced thermoelectric materials. By filling a defined amount of Cu atoms to the tetrahedral interstices, the multiphase TiFeSb alloy is stabilized into TiFexCuySb semiconductors with the HH-like structure. Owing to the enhanced Seebeck coefficient and reduced thermal conductivity, TiFe0.80Cu0.28Sb achieves a thermoelectric figure of merit of 0.87 at 923 K. image