Thermochemically evolved nanoplatelets of bismuth selenide with enhanced thermoelectric figure of merit

We firstly present a simple thermochemical method to fabricate high-quality Bi2Se3 nanoplatelets with enhanced figure of merit using elemental bismuth and selenium powders as precursors. The crystal structure of as synthesized products is characterized via X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) measurements. Morphological and chemical synthetic parameters are investigated through a series of experiments; thickness and composition of the platelets are well controlled in large scale production. Subsequently spark plasma sintering (SPS) is performed to fabricate n-type nanostructured bulk thermoelectric materials. Raman Spectroscopy of the two selected samples with approximately of 50 and 100 nm thicknesses shows three vibrational modes. The lower thickness sample exhibits the maximum red shift of about 2.17 cm(-1) and maximum broadening of about 10 cm(-1) by in-plane vibrational mode E-2 g. The enhanced value of figure of merit similar to 0.41 is obtained for pure phase bismuth selenide to the best of our knowledge. We observe metallic conduction behavior while semiconducting behavior for nanostructured bismuth selenide is reported elsewhere which could be due to different synthetic techniques adopted. These results clearly suggest that our adopted synthetic technique has profound effect on the electronic and thermoelectric transport properties of this material. (C) 2014 Author(s).