Synergistic Performance of Thermoelectric and Mechanical in Nanotwinned High-Entropy Semiconductors AgMnGePbSbTe5

Zheng Ma; Yubo Luo; Jinfeng Dong; Yukun Liu; Dan Zhang; Wang Li; Chengjun Li; Yingchao Wei; Qinghui Jiang; Xin Li; Huabing Yin; Vinayak P Dravid; Qiang Zhang; Shaoping Chen; Qingyu Yan; Junyou Yang; Mercouri G Kanatzidis

doi:10.1002/adma.202407982

Synergistic Performance of Thermoelectric and Mechanical in Nanotwinned High-Entropy Semiconductors AgMnGePbSbTe₅

Adv Mater. 2024 Nov;36(45):e2407982. doi: 10.1002/adma.202407982. Epub 2024 Sep 9.

Authors

Zheng Ma¹, Yubo Luo¹, Jinfeng Dong², Yukun Liu^{3

4}, Dan Zhang⁵, Wang Li¹, Chengjun Li¹, Yingchao Wei¹, Qinghui Jiang¹, Xin Li¹, Huabing Yin⁶, Vinayak P Dravid⁴, Qiang Zhang⁷, Shaoping Chen⁷, Qingyu Yan², Junyou Yang¹, Mercouri G Kanatzidis^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Materials Processing and Die & Mould Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, P. R. China.
² School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798, Singapore.
³ Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, 60208, USA.
⁴ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, 60208, USA.
⁵ College of Physics Science and Technology, Hebei University, Baoding, 071002, P. R. China.
⁶ Institute for Computational Materials Science, School of Physics and Electronics, Henan University, Kaifeng, 475004, P. R. China.
⁷ College of Materials Science and Engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan, 030024, P. R. China.

PMID: 39246135
DOI: 10.1002/adma.202407982

Abstract

Introducing nanotwins in thermoelectric materials represents a promising approach to achieving such a synergistic combination of thermoelectric properties and mechanical properties. By increasing configurational entropy, a sharply reduced stacking fault energy in a new nanotwinned high-entropy semiconductor AgMnGePbSbTe₅ is reached. Dense coherent nanotwin boundaries in this system provide an efficient phonon scattering barrier, leading to a high figure of merit ZT of ≈2.46 at 750 K and a high average ZT of ≈1.54 (300-823 K) with the presence of Ag₂Te nanoprecipitate in the sample. More importantly, owing to the dislocation pinning caused by coherent nanotwin boundaries and the chemical short-range disorder caused by the high configurational entropy effect, AgMnGePbSbTe₅ also exhibits robust mechanical properties, with flexural strength of 82 MPa and Vickers hardness of 210 H_V.

Keywords: AgMnGePbSbTe5; high entropy semiconductor; nanotwinned; thermoelectric material.

Abstract

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