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Improved electrical transport properties and optimized thermoelectric figure of merit in lithium-doped copper sulfides

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Abstract

Copper sulfide Cu2S is a p-type semiconducting compound that has attracted great attentions in the thermoelectric (TE) community most recently. Considering the intrinsic ultralow lattice thermal conductivity, the enhancement of TE performance in Cu2S should be achieved through improving its electrical transport properties. To achieve this goal, lithium element was doped into Cu2S in this study. A series of Cu2−xLi x S samples with different Li contents (x = 0, 0.005, 0.010, 0.050, and 0.100) was synthesized by the melting–annealing method. When x ≤ 0.05, the Cu2−xLi x S samples are stable and pure phases, having the same monoclinic structure with the pristine Cu2S at room temperature. The electrical conductivities in the Cu2−xLi x S samples are greatly improved with the Li-doping content increasing due to the enhanced carrier concentrations. Meanwhile, doping Li into Cu2S increases the ionic activation energy and lessens the influence of mobile Cu ions on the heat-carrying phonons. Thus, the thermal conductivities of the Li-doped Cu2S samples increase. A maximal figure of merit (zT) of 0.84 at 900 K is obtained in Cu1.99Li0.01S, about 133% improvement as compared with that in Cu2S matrix.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51472262 and 51625205), the Key Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. KFZD-SW-421) and the Shanghai Government (No. 15JC1400301).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of High Performance Ceramics and Superfine Microstructure, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Science, Shanghai, 200050, China

    Meng-Jia Guan, Peng-Fei Qiu, Qing-Feng Song, Du-Di Ren, Xun Shi & Li-Dong Chen

  2. University of Chinese Academy Science, Beijing, 100049, China

    Meng-Jia Guan & Qing-Feng Song

  3. Materials Genome Institute, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China

    Jiong Yang

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  1. Meng-Jia Guan
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  2. Peng-Fei Qiu
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  3. Qing-Feng Song
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  5. Du-Di Ren
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  6. Xun Shi
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  7. Li-Dong Chen
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Correspondence to Peng-Fei Qiu.

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Guan, MJ., Qiu, PF., Song, QF. et al. Improved electrical transport properties and optimized thermoelectric figure of merit in lithium-doped copper sulfides. Rare Met. 37, 282–289 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12598-018-1007-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12598-018-1007-0

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