Ag/Yb_0.35Co₄Sb₁₂热电复合材料的制备及热电性能研究

As a high-performance medium-temperature zone thermoelectric material, skutterudites has attracted much attention. Recently, how to further improve its thermoelectric performance has become a hot and difficult topic. Here, TE composites incorporated with different content silver are fabricated via "Melting-annealing" at high temperature and Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS). The influence about introduced Ag into matrix was studied carefully. As a result, the composites include Ag shows remarkably improved electrical conductivity (σ). In addition, the absolute value of Seebeck coefficient (α) was significantly increased due to the influence of the energy filtering effect at the interface between skutterudites and Ag, and the increase of thermal conductivity (κ) was also effectively controlled. Finally, the thermoelectric properties were greatly improved. Specially, when the Ag content was 0.5wt%, the maximal ZT values reached 1.28 at 800 K, which is approximately 44.3% higher than the matrix.