Thermoelectric, Electronic, and Optical Response of Nanostructured Al‐doped ZnO @ 2D‐TiC Composite

Abstract

AbstractZnO is one of the sought‐out materials for thermoelectricity. This study investigates the effect of aluminum doping, and titanium carbide (TiC) modification on the thermoelectric properties of ZnO through the synthesis of undoped ZnO, Al‐doped ZnO (Al‐ZnO), and TiC modified Al‐doped ZnO (TiC@Al‐ZnO) nanocomposite by the hydrothermal method and mechanical alloying. XRD, TEM, and SEM were used for structural and morphological studies. The electrical and thermal conductivity measurements on the nanocomposite were obtain using Van der pauw 4 probe collinear method. A decrease in thermal conductivity of ZnO from 7.62 to 5.75 W/cm K is observed after been modified with Al and TiC. TiC@Al‐ZnO nanocomposite exhibits the lowest thermal conductivity and highest power factor than Al‐doped ZnO. Furthermore, the impact of TiC and Al revealed an enormous effect on the Seebeck coefficient of ZnO reaching 105 μV K−1 AT 960 K, and a figure of merit value of 0.28 at 960 K. The increase in negative Seebeck coefficients suggests that the amount of active charge carrier, with significant energy, was temperature and structure depend. The experimental data obtained in this work showed the effect of both Al concentration and TiC nanosheet reinforcement on the thermoelectric properties of ZnO.