Chalcopyrite nanocomposite material for sustainable thermoelectrics

A chalcopyrite nanocomposite is explored as a low temperature and sustainable thermoelectric material. Chalcopyrite nanoparticles are created through a wet chemical synthetic method and display remarkable phase purity. These nanoparticle building blocks are processed into a large scale material by linking of nanoparticles by short chain ligands to enhance electrical conductivity, pressing into a pellet and subsequent thermal annealing to remove volatiles and enhance particle contacts through sintering. The resulting materials Seebeck characteristics are measured and found to be 23.6 μV/K, a P-type material.