First principles study of ternary skutterudites
Name
825552880-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
5.8 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
897271871c44a1ee271e14cd55a64d34
Author(s)
Li, An, M. Eng. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Advisor(s)
Gang Chen and Boris Kozinsky.
Date Issued
2011
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
As the demand of sustainable energy technologies increases in recent years, thermoelectric materials can potentially become a solution by increasing energy efficiency in certain systems, such as waste heat recovery system. Skutterudites is a popular group of thermoelectric materials because they show low thermal conductivity with filled voids in their structures. To investigate the potential of ternary skutterudites as thermoelectric materials, first-principles calculations are performed on filled and unfilled CoSn1.S1.S5, CoSn1.5Se1.5, CoSn1.5Te1.5, CoGe1.5S1.5, CoGe1.5Se1.5, and CoGe1.5Te1.5. Alkaline-earth metal and Lanthanum are used as void fillers in this study. Transport properties, including Seebeck coefficient and electrical conductivity, are obtained from Boltzmann transport theory. The calculation results show high Seebeck coefficients and low electrical conductivities. Future work will focus on increasing the electrical conductivity while reducing the thermal conductivity with appropriate filling.
Description
Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2011.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 66-70).
Subjects
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
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