Thermoelectric Properties of Iron Disilicide and Manganese Silicide: Synthesis and Characterization

Among the thermoelectric materials, silicides are the group of thermoelectric materials which are eco-friendly (Han et al. in Aust Inst Innov Mater (Chin Sci Bull) 59: 2073, 2014) and can be considered as the promising high-temperature energy harvesting materials. The exclusivity about the synthesis route used is that it is economical, scalable and less time-consuming (20-h synthesis period), and minimum metallic content in the synthesized samples and same milling setup was used to synthesize two different high-temperature silicides, that is, iron disilicide and manganese silicide. The Seebeck coefficient was found to increase gradually with the increase in temperature and was found to be more for MnSi1.73 (156 mu V/K at 1150 K) than beta-FeSi2 (135 mu V/K in the temperature range of about 1000-1050 K). The MnSi1.73 (0.37) was found to have higher ZT value than beta-FeSi2 (0.23).