Thermoelectric properties of zintl antimonite compound YbCd2-xZnxSb2 prepared under microwave solid-state irradiation

Abstract

We herein introduce a microwave-assisted solid state technique to synthesize zintl compounds YbCd2-xZnxSb2 (0.0 ≤ x ≤ 2.0) in short time of 10 min by utilizing an active carbon as a susceptor material. Here, we report an energy-saving preparation route using a domestic microwave oven. A microwave susceptor material rapidly heats the elemental starting materials inside an evacuated quartz ampoule resulting in near single phase compounds. By studying the crystal structure using X-Ray diffraction (XRD) and SEM-EDS, the hexagonal crystal structures of the prepared samples were identified. Thermoelectric characterizations have been performed for all obtained samples and among them the compound YbCd1.6Zn0.4Sb2 is found as the best one because it has Seebeck coefficient of −22.68 μV/k, and power factor of 8.20 μWcm−1k−2 at 523 K with carrier concentration of 3.04 × 1021 cm−3 at 300 K.