Rapid fabrication of Se-modified skutterudites obtained via self-propagating high-temperature synthesis and pulse plasma sintering route.

Selenium is an effective dopant in skutterudite-based thermoelectric materials. It strongly influences thermal transport properties due to effective phonon scattering. This study proposes a short-term fabrication route to Se-modified CoSb 3 -based materials. Alloy synthesis was conducted via self-propagating high-temperature synthesis. Subsequently, pulse plasma sintering consolidated all materials. As a result, thermoelectric materials with high electrical properties homogeneity were obtained. Seebeck potential mapping showed the measured deviation of the Seebeck coefficient for all fabricated samples was between 5 and 7%. A very low thermal conductivity (1.59 W m−1 K−1, at 573 K) was achieved for the highest doped sample, and one of the lowest reported results obtained for bulk skutterudite-based thermoelectric materials ever. This resulted in a low lattice thermal conductivity (1.51 W m−1 K−1, at 573 K). This led to the highest ZT (0.27 at 623 K) for the highest doped sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]