Electrodeposition of CoSb/sub 3/ nanowires

Materials with the skutterudite crystal structure, such as CoSb/sub 3/, have been demonstrated to be promising in the development of high figure-of-merit thermoelectric materials. Theoretical studies have shown that quantum confinement may produce enhancements in the figure-of-merit. Calculations based on the Kubakaddi model for thermopower of a nanowire have shown that nanowires of CoSb/sub 3/ should produce this enhancement at larger wire diameters than other candidate materials, such as Bi/sub 2/Te/sub 3/. This study has used pulse plating followed by a post anneal treatment to fabricate CoSb/sub 3/ electrochemically from a citrate bath. Initial attempts were also made to deposit cobalt and antimony into a porous anodic aluminum oxide matrix. Porous anodic aluminum oxide was chosen as a host material because of its relatively uniform pore diameter and spacing, its vertical walled "test tube" shape, and the high barrier to tunneling that the aluminum oxide provides.