Stabilization and high thermoelectric performance of high-entropy-type cubic AgBi(S, Se, Te)2

Abstract

As thermoelectric generators can convert waste heat into electricity, they play an important role in energy harvesting. The metal chalcogenide AgBiSe2 is one of the high-performance thermoelectric materials with low lattice thermal conductivity (κlat), but it exhibits temperature-dependent crystal structural transitions from hexagonal to rhombohedral, and finally a cubic phase as the temperature rises. The high figure-of-merit ZT is obtained only for the high-temperature cubic phase. In this study, we utilized the high-entropy-alloy (HEA) concept for AgBiSe2 to stabilize the cubic phase throughout the entire temperature range with enhanced thermoelectric performance. We synthesized high-entropy-type AgBiSe2−2xSxTex bulk polycrystals and realized the stabilization of the cubic phase from room temperature to 800 K for x ≥ 0.6. The ultra-low κlat of 0.30 Wm−1K−1 and the high peak ZT ∼ 0.9 at around 750 K were realized for cubic AgBiSe2−2xSxTex without carrier tuning. In addition, the average ZT value of x = 0.6 and 0.7 for the temperature range of 360–750 K increased to 0.38 and 0.40, respectively, which are comparable to the highest previously reported values.