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Thermoelectric materials PbTe–PbSe solid solutions (with composition of PbTe 1−x Se x (x = 0, 0.1, 0.25, 0.5) were synthesized by high pressure method successfully. The power factors of the PbTe 1−x Se x (x = 0, 0.1, 0.25) samples were nearly independent with the composition. The thermal conductivity of PbTe was depressed largely by alloying with Se. An enhanced figure-of-merit ZT ∼0.55 was obtained for x = 0.25 at room temperature. Especially, we found that PbTe 1−x Se x materials exhibited weakly temperature-dependent figure-of-merit values in the range of 300–600 K. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Thermoelectric materials PbSe were successfully prepared by high pressure and high temperature technique (HPHT) and the pressure-dependent thermoelectric properties were studied from 300 to 600K. The measurement results indicate that the electrical conduction type in PbSe can be changed from p- (<2.0GPa) to n-type (>2.0GPa) by application of pressure of about 2.0GPa. And the electrical resistivity can be reduced effectively by pressure. Low thermal conductivity (~0.8W/mK) is obtained for high pressure synthesized PbSe. These results indicate that high pressure provides a viable and controllable way of tuning the thermoelectric properties for PbSe. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]