Improvement in thermoelectric power factor of mechanically alloyed p-type SiGe by incorporation of TiB2

Abstract

Nearly 60% of the world’s useful energy is wasted as heat and recovering a fraction of this waste heat by converting it as useful electrical power is an important area of research[1]. Thermoelectric power generators (TEG) are solid state devices which converts heat into electricity. TEG consists of n and p-type thermoelements connected electrically in series and thermally in parallel[2]. Silicon germanium (SiGe) alloy is one of the conventional high temperature thermoelectric materials and is being used in radio-isotopes based thermoelectric power generators for deep space exploration programs.Temperature (T) dependence of thermoelectric (TE) properties of p-type SiGe and p-type SiGe-x wt.%TiB2 (x=6,8,10%) nanocomposite materials has been studied with in the temperature range of 300 K to 1100 K. It is observed that there is an improvement in the power factor (α2/ρ) of SiGe alloy on addition of TiB2 upto 8 wt.% that is mainly due to increase in the Seebeck coefficient (α) and electrical conductivity (σ) of the alloy.