Discipline: Nanoscience
Subcategory: Materials Science
Session: 1
Room: McKinley
Mamadou Mbaye - Norfolk State University
Co-Author(s): Andrew Howe (Norfolk State University); Sangram Pradhan (Norfolk State University Center for Materials Research); Messaoud Bahoura (Norfolk State University Center for Materials Research)
Thermoelectric devices based on Bi2Te3 and its alloys have received significant attention from industry and academia due to their large scalability and commercial viability in producing electricity from waste heat for niche applications in micro refrigeration and small power generation. Here, we focus our interest on ternary chalcogenide Bi2Te3 based alloys p-type Bi0.4Sb1.6Te3 and n-type Bi2Te2.88Se0.17 for efficient, flexible, and innovative vertical thermoelectric device fabrication using Radio Frequency magnetron deposition method. We design and fabricate the device structure in different substrate with a 40 mm by 40 mm arrays of p-type and n-type cylindrical thermoelectric legs of varying diameters and thicknesses. The inclusion of interstitial atoms (Sb and Se) in these nanostructured ternary chalcogenides provides a two-fold benefit as it can greatly reduce the thermal conductivity of the material due to scattering events of a wide range of phonons carrying heat but also improve the power factor through modification of the electronic structure of the material. For viability and device performance testing, we performed COMSOL Multiphysics simulations and compare our results with experimental data of the fabricated device.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): This work is supported by the NSF-CREST Grant number HRD 1547771 and NSF-CREST Grant number HRD 1036494.
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Messaoud Bahoura, mbahoura@nsu.edu
Role: Ternary chalcogenide materials growth by RF magnetron deposition method, Metal contact deposition using RF and DC sputtering, Mask fabrication using 3D printing technology, Atomic Force Microscopy, FESEM, Seebeck measurements, Thermal conductivity measurements, COMSOL multiphysics simulations of fabricated device,