Decomposition behavior and thermoelectric properties of copper selenide—graphite composites

Abstract

Cu2Se is a high ZT material consisting of cheap and earth abundant elements. Its high thermoelectric performance is mainly based on very low thermal conductivity associated with mobile atoms. This comes with the drawback of a critical voltage, over which the material decomposes to elemental copper and a copper-deficient Cu2−xSe phase. Composites of copper selenide with graphite do not enhance the critical voltage significantly as copper selenide is not completely encapsulated by graphite. Thermoelectric properties of pellets of such composites obtained by mixing and pressing Cu2Se powder and graphite flakes are comparable to pristine Cu2Se, but thermal stability increases remarkably. Samples with different grain sizes show that the reproducibility of measurements is worse for larger grains, which in addition lead to inferior thermoelectric performance. Higher graphite contents increase both thermal and electrical conductivity, and an optimum of the thermoelectric figure of merit ZT is observed for fine-grained samples with 4 wt. % graphite.