Effect of powder mixing on thermoelectric properties in Bi2Te3-based sintered compounds

The effect of powder mixing on thermoelectric properties was studied in n-type Bi2Te2.85Se0.15 compounds and p-type Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 compounds. The figure-of-merit of the n- and p-type sintered compounds was strongly affected by carrier mobility. The use of coarse powders (200–300 μm) was beneficial to improve the crystallographic orientation of sintered compound. However, voids in the compound decreased the carrier mobility. As the fine powders (below 45 μm) were blended with coarse powders up to about 30%, the carrier mobility was increased due to the reduction of the voids. The addition of fine powders over 30% degraded the carrier mobility due to the decrease of crystallographic orientation and the increase of particle boundary. When the fine powder content was 20%, the n- and p-type compounds exhibited the maximum figure-of-merit of 2.31 × 10−3 K−1 and 2.89 × 10−3 K−1, respectively.