Ductile Ag2S0.7Te0.3 compounds fabricated by using mechanical alloying method

Abstract

Recently, Ag2S-based compounds have aroused intensive research interest due to their metal-like ductility, high shape-conformability, and decent thermoelectric (TE) performance at room temperature. The melting–annealing method is commonly adopted to prepare Ag2S-based compounds. Compared with the melting–annealing method, the mechanical alloying (MA) method has the advantages of short period and low cost, but it has not been adopted to prepare ductile Ag2S-based compounds. Herein, we successfully prepare the ductile Ag2[Formula: see text][Formula: see text] compound by using the MA method. The as-prepared Ag2[Formula: see text][Formula: see text] products are small spheres with a diameter of several millimeters rather than the powders. These spheres are phase pure with homogeneous element distribution and good deformability. After the consolidation process at 773 K, the Ag2[Formula: see text][Formula: see text] prepared by using the MA method shows good ductility like that prepared by the melting-annealing method. Finally, a maximum bending strain of above 15%, a maximum compressive strain of above 40%, and a maximum figure-of-merit (zT) of 0.5 are obtained, indicating the feasibility of MA in the preparation of ductile TE compounds.