Abstract
Tin selenide (SnSe) is one of the most promising candidates to realize environmentally friendly, cost‐effective, and high‐performance thermoelectrics, derived from its outstanding electrical transport properties by appropriate bandgaps and intrinsic low lattice thermal conductivity from its anharmonic layered structure. Advanced aqueous synthesis possesses various unique advantages including convenient morphology control, exceptional high doping solubility, and distinctive vacancy engineering. Considering that there is an urgent demand for a comprehensive survey on the aqueous synthesis technique applied to thermoelectric SnSe, herein, a thorough overview of aqueous synthesis, characterization, and thermoelectric performance in SnSe is provided. New insights into the aqueous synthesis‐based strategies for improving the performance are provided, including vacancy synergy, crystallization design, solubility breakthrough, and local lattice imperfection engineering, and an attempt to build the inherent links between the aqueous synthesis‐induced structural characteristics and the excellent thermoelectric performance is presented. Furthermore, the significant advantages and potentials of an aqueous synthesis route for fabricating SnSe‐based 2D thermoelectric generators, including nanorods, nanobelts, and nanosheets, are also discussed. Finally, the controversy, strategy, and outlook toward future enhancement of SnSe‐based thermoelectric materials are also provided. This Review guides the design of thermoelectric SnSe with high performance and provides new perspectives as a reference for other thermoelectric systems.
Highlights
With increasing the interest in global energy dilemma, space exploration, medical physics advances, and resource exploration, to develop a power system that can supply itself from waste heat is highly needed, and thermoelectric power where D, ρ, Cp, κe, and κl are the thermal diffusivity, mass density, specific heat, and electronic and lattice thermal conductivities, respectively.[5]
The aqueous solution route has distinctive features, there is still lack of a comprehensive Review to summarize these unique features on enhancing the thermoelectric performance of polycrystalline SnSe. Based on this urgent demand, in this article, we provide a thorough overview toward an integrated understanding of synthesis, characterizations, and performance in polycrystalline SnSe
These nanopores can contribute to a high peak ZT of 1.7 ± 0.2 at 823 K, derived from the ultralow κ of 0.24 W m−1 K−1 achieved at this temperature, indicating that appropriate nanoporosity design can provide a new avenue in achieving high performance in polycrystalline SnSe
Summary
With increasing the interest in global energy dilemma, space exploration, medical physics advances, and resource exploration, to develop a power system that can supply itself from waste heat is highly needed, and thermoelectric power where D, ρ, Cp, κe, and κl are the thermal diffusivity, mass density, specific heat, and electronic and lattice thermal conductivities, respectively.[5]. As can be clearly seen, aqueous solution routes (including solvothermal, hydrothermal and traditional aqueous route) can achieve both high peak and average ZTs, indicating considerable potentials of the solution routes possess for achieving high thermoelectric performance in polycrystalline SnSe. Xiao-Lei Shi is currently a Research Fellow of Energy Materials in the University of Southern Queensland. Zhi-Gang Chen is currently a Professor of Energy Materials in the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) He received his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Science, in 2008. This Review will provide guidance in the design of SnSe-based thermoelectric materials with high performance and robust stability, and provide new perspectives as reference for other thermoelectric system
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