A general strategy for high-throughput experimental screening of promising bulk thermoelectric materials

Abstract

High-throughput (HTP) experiments play key roles in accelerating the discovery of advanced materials, but the HTP preparation and characterization, especially for bulk samples, are extremely difficult. In this work, we developed a novel and general strategy for HTP screening of high-performance bulk thermoelectric materials. The performed full-chain HTP experiments cover rapid synthesis of the bulk sample with quasi-continuous composition, microarea phase identification and structure analysis, and measurement of the spatial distribution of the sample composition, electrical and thermal transport properties. According to our experiments, bulk Bi2− x Sb x Te3 ( x = 1–2) and Bi2Te3− x Se x ( x = 0–1.5) samples with quasi-continuous compositions have been rapidly fabricated by this HTP method. The target thermoelectric materials with the best Sb/Bi and Te/Se ratios are successfully screened out based on subsequent HTP characterization results, demonstrating that this HTP technique is effective in speeding up the exploration of novel high-performance thermoelectric materials.