A rapid method to extract Seebeck coefficient under a large temperature difference

Qing Zhu; Hee Seok Kim; Zhifeng Ren

doi:10.1063/1.4986965

A rapid method to extract Seebeck coefficient under a large temperature difference

Rev Sci Instrum. 2017 Sep;88(9):094902. doi: 10.1063/1.4986965.

Authors

Qing Zhu¹, Hee Seok Kim², Zhifeng Ren¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics and The Texas Center for Superconductivity, University of Houston, Houston, Texas 77204, USA.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of South Alabama, Mobile, Alabama 36608, USA.

PMID: 28964186
DOI: 10.1063/1.4986965

Abstract

The Seebeck coefficient is one of the three important properties in thermoelectric materials. Since thermoelectric materials usually work under large temperature difference in real applications, we propose a quasi-steady state method to accurately measure the Seebeck coefficient under large temperature gradient. Compared to other methods, this method is not only highly accurate but also less time consuming. It can measure the Seebeck coefficient in both the temperature heating up and cooling down processes. In this work, a Zintl material (Mg_3.15Nb_0.05Sb_1.5Bi_0.49Te_0.01) was tested to extract the Seebeck coefficient from room temperature to 573 K. Compared with a commercialized Seebeck coefficient measurement device (ZEM-3), there is ±5% difference between those from ZEM-3 and this method.