Abstract
High figure of merit has been reported in superlattice structures in recent years mainly due to a large reduction in thermal conductivity, while maintaining or even enhancing the power factor. These findings suggest the possibility of using nanocomposites to reduce a material's thermal conductivity and thereby increasing the thermoelectric figure of merit. The current work reports on the thermal conductivity of various Si-Ge nanocomposites synthesized in a simple and straightforward process that allows one to exploit nanoscale physics while rapidly producing macroscale devices. Composite synthesis consisted of combining Si nanoparticles approximately 70 nm in diameter with micron-sized Ge particles in various atomic ratios via hotpressing to form macroscale samples. Room-temperature thermal conductivity was measured for each of the nanocomposite samples and compared with the values of SiGe bulk alloys. In this preliminary work, we observed a significant reduction in bulk thermal conductivity in such materials.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dr. J.-P. Fleurial and Dr. P. Gogna. The work is financially supported by NASA.
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Harris, T., Lee, H., Wang, D.Z. et al. Thermal Conductivity Reduction of SiGe Nanocomposites. MRS Online Proceedings Library 793, 232–237 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1557/PROC-793-S7.2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/PROC-793-S7.2