[BNC-grads-list] Y. Wang PhD Final April 10, 2014 Notice

[Anthrop, Heather L]

Note: Seminar and Exam location in DLR 143A 

MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING SEMINAR 

MSE PhD Final Examination 

Branched Nanowire Arrays as Bulk-like Thermoelectric Materials 

by: Yuefeng Wang 

Advisor: Prof. T. Sands 

ABSTRACT 

Thermoelectric generators (TEG) and coolers (TEC) consist of a plurality of n-type and p-type semiconductor TE leg elements, which can be utilized to convert heat into electricity, or conversely, create temperature gradients. The efficiency of a TE device is directly related to the material’s dimensionless thermoelectric figure of merit, ZT = S2σT/κ, where S is the Seebeck coefficient, σ is the electrical conductivity, T is the absolute temperature, and κ is the thermal conductivity. Bulk-alloy bismuth telluride (Bi2Te3) as the most widely used TE material has a room temperature ZT around unity. Recent research progress in nanostructured materials and composite materials enlightened the path to enhance the ZT above 1. Nanowire array topologies offer promise for engineering the electrical conductivity and phonon scattering effects, both of which have been studied extensively since the 1990s. Conventional porous anodic alumina (PAA) was used for successful fabrication of Bi2Te3 nanowire arrays, but with array thicknesses limited to tens of μm, too thin for high performance TE devices. The parallel nanowire arrays also suffer from mechanical fragility, low Bi2Te3 volume fraction, limited thermal conductivity suppression, vulnerability to shear load and slow template fabrication. In this work, I investigated the Bi2Te3 branched nanowire array (BNA) topology that features nanostructure-to-bulk-like materials integration and radially modified nanowire compositions, allowing for thermal conductivity (κ) reduction, multiscale nanostructure creation, preservation of power factor (S2σ), strain relaxation and shear compliance. Branched Bi2Te3 nanowire arrays were fabricated from the bottom up by electrochemically depositing Bi2Te3 into 300-500 μm thick branched porous anodic alumina (BPAA) templates followed by vapor annealing. The annealing process homogenizes the native point defects and can be used to introduce Se as an axially-graded dopant, which also forms nanocrystalline Bi2SeTe2 phonon scatterers. The thic
kness of the nanowire array device can be fabricated up to 350 μm (wire aspect ratio > 1000:1), which is approaching commercialized bulk-form TE elements. Various characterization techniques including XRD, FESEM, HRTEM, EDS, AFM, etc. were employed to analyze the morphologic, structural and stoichiometric properties of the material. At room temperature, characterization of electrical, thermal and Seebeck properties were performed to demonstrate the device-level fabrication viability. At 300K, thermal conductivity was measured to be 0.5W/m-K. Electrical conductivity was measured at ~1.43x104 S/m. An effective bulk ZT of 0.31 was measured and the microscopic corrected value was 0.39. To demonstrate the p-type TE counterpart, pulsed laser assisted electrodeposition was used to fabricate Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 nanowires. In addition, in order to calculate the optimum thermoelectric element leg length under different heat transfer conditions, a numerical model of thermoelectric device for both n- and p-type legs was developed in Matlab and powered by Rappture on nanoHUB.org. 

The demonstration of Bi2Te3 branched nanowire array structures enables a nano-to-bulk, composition-modulated and potentially scalable method to fabricate thermoelectric materials. The BNA structure maintains the nanowire electrical conduction continuity by electrochemical deposition, and offers extensive control over the wire radial composition and nanostructure. Moreover, the BNA’s phonon scattering effect is attributed to nanowire array branching, high surface to volume ratios, grain boundaries, Bi2SeTe2 nanocrystals and atomic alloying, covering length scales ranging from tens of μm down to less than 1 nm. Overall, the branched Bi2Te3 nanowire array as a bulk-like thermoelectric material is a promising structure for enhancing the figure of merit, ZT, and has promise to lead to the development of superior engineered nanomaterials as a substitute for bulk Bi2Te3 alloy materials. This work was partially supported by Office of Naval Research. 

Date: Thursday, April 10, 2014 

Time: 10:30 A.M. 

Place: DLR 143A