Fabrication and property of high-performance Ag-Pb-Sb-Te system semiconducting thermoelectric materials

High performance Ag-Pb-Sb-Te system thermoelectric bulk materials were fabricated by a combination of mechanical alloying (MA) and spark plasma sintering (SPS). Phase composition and microstructure of the resultant materials were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron micros-copy (SEM) analysis. A special emphasis was paid to the effects of chemical composition, especially the Pb content on the thermoelectric properties of the Ag0.8Pb18+xSbTe20 samples, including electrical resistivity, Seebeck coefficient, power factor, thermal conductivity and dimensionless figure of merit. The present study reveals that the optimal composition of Ag0.8Pb18+xSbTe20 samples is Ag0.8Pb22.5SbTe20 and the maximum figure of merit (ZT) is 1.2 at 673 K.