Practical High-Performance (Bi,Sb)₂Te₃-Based Thermoelectric Nanocomposites Fabricated by Nanoparticle Mixing and Scrap Recycling

Bi₂Te₃-based compounds are the most mature and widely used thermoelectric materials. However, industrial device fabrication will inevitably produce a lot of Bi₂Te₃ scraps, which results in wastes of expensive material resources. In this work, we recycled p-type (Bi,Sb)₂Te₃ scraps and reprocessed them by making nanocomposites with nano-SiC. The thermoelectric performance was enhanced, and a high ZT value of 1.07 was achieved, which is a significant improvement compared with commercial p-type (Bi,Sb)₂Te₃ ingots. Also, the hardness showed a notable increase, which is beneficial for device fabrication. In addition, we adjusted the proportion of Bi/Te of the commercial p-type (Bi,Sb)₂Te₃ scraps, thereby improving the thermoelectric performance and obtaining a higher ZT value of 1.2.