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International Round-Robin Study of the Thermoelectric Transport Properties of an n-Type Half-Heusler Compound from 300 K to 773 K

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Abstract

International transport property-measurement round-robins have been conducted by the thermoelectric annex under the International Energy Agency (IEA) Implementing Agreement on Advanced Materials for Transportation (AMT). Two previous round-robins used commercially available bismuth telluride as the test material, with the objectives of understanding measurement issues and developing standard testing procedures. This round-robin extended the measurement temperature range to 773 K. It was designed to meet the increasing demands for reliable transport data for thermoelectric materials used for power-generation applications. Eleven laboratories from six IEA-AMT member countries participated in the study. A half-Heusler (n-type) material prepared by GMZ Energy was selected for the round-robin. The measured transport properties had a narrower distribution of uncertainty than previous round-robin results. The study intentionally included multiple testing methods and instrument types. Over the full temperature range, the measurement discrepancies for the figure of merit, ZT, in this round-robin were ±11.5 to ±16.4% from the averages.

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Acknowledgements

The paper describes work being conducted is part of the Implementing Agreement on Advanced Materials for Transportation under the auspices of the International Energy Agency. The authors would like to acknowledge financial support by Natural Resources Canada for the work conducted at CanmetMATERIALS, the International S&T Cooperation Program of China (2015DFA51050), and the home institution of each participating laboratory. HW would like to thank the assistant secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy of the Department of Energy and the Propulsion Materials program under the Vehicle Technologies program, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory managed by UT-Battelle LLC under contract DE-AC 05000OR22725.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA

    Hsin Wang & Wallace D. Porter

  2. Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China

    Shengqiang Bai & Lidong Chen

  3. NPL, Teddington, London, UK

    Alexander Cuenat

  4. GMZ Energy, Waltham, MA, USA

    Giri Joshi

  5. University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Holger Kleinke

  6. Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques, Freiburg, Germany

    Jan König

  7. Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute, Anshan, Korea

    Hee Woong Lee & Min-Wook Oh

  8. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, USA

    Joshua Martin

  9. University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA

    Zhifeng Ren

  10. General Motors Global R&D, Warren, MI, USA

    James Salvador

  11. Marlow Industries, Nashville, TX, USA

    Jeff Sharp & Alan J. Thompson

  12. Army Research Laboratory, Adelphi, MD, USA

    Patrick Taylor

  13. CanmetMATERIALS, Hamilton, ON, Canada

    Y. C. Tseng

  14. Evident Thermoelectric, Troy, NY, USA

    Giri Joshi

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  1. Hsin Wang
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Correspondence to Hsin Wang.

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Wang, H., Bai, S., Chen, L. et al. International Round-Robin Study of the Thermoelectric Transport Properties of an n-Type Half-Heusler Compound from 300 K to 773 K. J. Electron. Mater. 44, 4482–4491 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-015-4006-z

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