HPHT synthesis and electrical properties of AgSbTe2–Ag2Te thermoelectric alloys

In this letter, p-type pseudo-binary AgSbTe2–Ag2Te thermoelectric alloys with the composition of (AgSbTe2)1 − x(Ag2Te)x (x = 0~0.2) were prepared by high pressure and high temperature (HPHT) method. The samples are near single phase AgSbTe2 with a small quantity of impurities including Sb2Te3 and Ag2Te. The electrical properties including the Seebeck coefficient and the electrical resistivity depending on synthetic pressure and the Ag2Te content x were studied at room temperature. The measurement results show that the Seebeck coefficient and the electrical resistivity for (AgSbTe2)1 − x(Ag2Te)x decrease with an increase of the synthetic pressure and x which indicate that high pressure combining alloying with Ag2Te could modulate the electrical properties of Ag–Sb–Te system effectively.