title: Thermoelectric performance of Ni compensated cerium and neodymium double filled p-type skutterudites.
abstract: We have synthesized Ni compensated Ce and Nd double filled p-type skutterudites CexNdxFe3.7Ni0.3Sb12 with x = 0.35, 0.40, 0.45, and 0.5 by a melting-quenching-annealing method. The samples were made by directly hot pressing the hand ground powder at 650 °C for 5 minutes at a pressure of about 80 MPa. Since Ni has two more electrons than Fe, a lower power factor and a stronger bipolar effect in thermal conductivity are expected at higher temperature. In the experiments, we have demonstrated that by suitably tuning the Fe-Ni ratio and filler concentration, we can achieve both a higher power factor (∼35 μW cm(-1) K(-2) at 535 °C) and a lower thermal conductivity (∼2.1 W m(-1) K(-1) at room temperature and ∼2.7 W m(-1) K(-1) at 535 °C) in Ce0.4Nd0.4Fe3.7Ni0.3Sb12. A peak thermoelectric figure-of-merit of ∼1.1 at 475 °C is achieved in Ce0.4Nd0.4Fe3.7Ni0.3Sb12.
authors: Department of Physics and Texas Center for Superconductivity, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204, USA. zren@uh.edu.
authors: Tulashi
authors: T
authors: Dahal
authors: Qing
authors: Q
authors: Jie
authors: Yucheng
authors: Y
authors: Lan
authors: Chuanfei
authors: C
authors: Guo
authors: Zhifeng
authors: Z
authors: Ren