TY - JOUR
T1 - Improvement of thermoelectric power of n-type earth-abundant iron rich alloy by microstructure engineering
AU - Wang, Jun
AU - Li, Yan
AU - Yaer, Xinba
AU - Qiqige, Aodun
AU - Fang, Chao
AU - Miao, Lei
AU - Liu, Chengyan
N1 - Funding Information:
This work is partially support by Science Research Grant for Inner Mongolia Higher Educational Institute ( NJZZ073 ), Research Funding of Inner Mongolia University of Technology ( ZD201307 ), open fund of Key laboratory for Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion, Chinese Academy of Sciences (GIEC) ( y407k61001 ) and Natural Science Foundation of Inner Mongolia ( 2015MS0530 ). The authors also gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Beijing center for physical & chemical analysis for the measurement of heat capacity for this work.
PY - 2016/4/25
Y1 - 2016/4/25
N2 - Due to the exhaustion of rare metal resources and the hazard of toxic material to the environment, development of cost-effective, nontoxic, and earth-abundant thermoelectric materials has become more urgent. This study introduces a nontoxic, earth abundant n-type iron-based cost-effective Fe-2.3C-Si-5Mn-7V-8Cr thermoelectric material that is prepared by a simple melting method. Significant increase in both electrical conductivity and Seebeck coefficient are achieved by several heat treatment processes to optimize the distribution and grain size of VC, Cr23-xFexC6 typed chromium carbide as well as base matrix. As a result, the power factor of the sample that is normalized at 1150 °C is about 0.75 mWm-1K -2 in maximum value, which is 2.6 times larger than that (0.29 mWm-1K-2) of as-cast sample. The highest ZT value of the sample that is normalized at 1150 °C is 0.028 at 868 K, which is 4.3 times larger than that of as-cast sample (0.0065 at 964 K) in present study, indicating that a proper heat treatment process would remarkably enhance ZT value. This research provides extremely valuable data for the future researches on thermoelectric alloys.
AB - Due to the exhaustion of rare metal resources and the hazard of toxic material to the environment, development of cost-effective, nontoxic, and earth-abundant thermoelectric materials has become more urgent. This study introduces a nontoxic, earth abundant n-type iron-based cost-effective Fe-2.3C-Si-5Mn-7V-8Cr thermoelectric material that is prepared by a simple melting method. Significant increase in both electrical conductivity and Seebeck coefficient are achieved by several heat treatment processes to optimize the distribution and grain size of VC, Cr23-xFexC6 typed chromium carbide as well as base matrix. As a result, the power factor of the sample that is normalized at 1150 °C is about 0.75 mWm-1K -2 in maximum value, which is 2.6 times larger than that (0.29 mWm-1K-2) of as-cast sample. The highest ZT value of the sample that is normalized at 1150 °C is 0.028 at 868 K, which is 4.3 times larger than that of as-cast sample (0.0065 at 964 K) in present study, indicating that a proper heat treatment process would remarkably enhance ZT value. This research provides extremely valuable data for the future researches on thermoelectric alloys.
KW - Chromium carbide
KW - Iron rich alloy
KW - Microstructure
KW - Thermoelectric power
KW - Vanadium carbide
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jallcom.2016.01.030
DO - 10.1016/j.jallcom.2016.01.030
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84954185049
VL - 665
SP - 7
EP - 12
JO - Journal of Alloys and Compounds
JF - Journal of Alloys and Compounds
SN - 0925-8388
ER -