Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol.133, No.40, 15910-15913, 2011
Colloidal Synthesis of Cu2CdSnSe4 Nanocrystals and Hot-Pressing to Enhance the Thermoelectric Figure-of-Merit
We report a solution-based synthesis of monodispersed Cu2CdSnSe4 nanocrystals and a study on the thermoelectric properties of these wide-band-gap dense materials compacted from nanocrystals for the first time. With the help of copper dopants and selenium vacancies generated during wet-chemistry synthesis, a large increment in the power factor is observed, and the dimensionless figure-of-merit ZT reaches a peak value of 0.65 at 450 degrees C.