Development and Applications of Non-destructive Screening Tools for Thermoelectric Materials at NIST

Published

October 20, 2014

Author(s)

Winnie K. Wong-Ng, Yonggao Y. Yan, Joshua B. Martin, Makoto Otani, Evans L. Thomas, Xinfeng Tang, Martin L. Green

Abstract

The increased research and development of thermoelectric materials for energy conversion applications is driven primarily by the need for improved efficiency in the global utilization of energy resources. To facilitate the search for higher efficiency thermoelectric materials, we have developed a suite of complimentary high-throughput screening systems for performing thermoelectric metrology on combinatorial thin films. These custom capabilities include a facility for combinatorial thin film synthesis and suite of tools for screening the Seebeck coefficient, electrical resistance, and thermal conductivity of combinatorial films. The room temperature Seebeck coefficient and resistance are measured via an automated multiprobe apparatus, thus obtaining the power factor, S2(sigma),where S = Seebeck coefficient, sigma = electrical conductivity. In addition, we are developing a high temperature (> 300 K) power factor screening tool. Thermal effusivity (to calculate the thermal conductivity) is measured using a frequency domain thermoreflectance technique. Using these tools, we are capable of performing power factor and thermal conductivity measurements on 1000 distinct sample-points within 6 hours for each instrument. This paper will detail several application examples using these tools on thermoelectric materials, including composition-spread films, conventional thin films, bulk ceramics, ribbons/tapes, and on single crystals.

Citation

Ferroelectrics

Pub Type

Journals

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DOI Link

Keywords

thermoelectric properties, high throughput thermoelectric screening tools, combinatorial films, applications of thermoelectric screening tools, thermoelectric materials

Citation

Wong-Ng, W. , Yan, Y. , Martin, J. , Otani, M. , Thomas, E. , Tang, X. and Green, M. (2014), Development and Applications of Non-destructive Screening Tools for Thermoelectric Materials at NIST, Ferroelectrics, [online], https://doi.org/10.1080/00150193.2014.923725 (Accessed October 12, 2025)