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Recently, PbSe has attracted extensive attention as an excellent thermoelectric material, which is considered as an alternative for PbTe. In this paper, single-phase PbSe was rapidly synthesized by mechanical alloying followed by high-pressure sintering method. The effect of sintering temperature on the thermoelectric properties of PbSe has been investigated. The resistivity, Seebeck coefficient, and phonon thermal conductivity of PbSe decrease with the increasing sintering temperature due to the formation of native defects during HPS process. The maximum figure of merit ZT value of ~ 0.57 at 600 K was achieved for the sample sintered at 1200 K, which is much higher than that of polycrystalline PbSe around this temperature prepared by other methods. These results indicate that combining with MA and HPS is a simple, energy-saving, and effective method to synthesize and tune the thermoelectric properties for PbSe. [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]

Besides inferior conversion efficiency, the widespread application of thermoelectric materials currently faces the challenges of the rare and high cost of constituent elements, complex and time-consuming synthesis. Therefore, it is urgent to develop facile synthesized methods and high-performance thermoelectric materials consisting of elements with earth-abundance and low cost. Meeting above partial requirement, lead sulfide (PbS) recently was identified as a potential thermoelectric material to substitute current commercial PbTe. In this paper, a one-step high-pressure method was employed to facile and fast synthesis of PbS. Trace Cl doping tunes the carrier concentration of PbS effectively, which optimizes the electrical transport properties. Further PbSe alloying sharply reduces the thermal conductivity of PbS. Therefore, an enhanced zT ∼1.0 @ 700 K was obtained for PbS doped with 0.3 at% Cl and alloyed with 25 at% PbSe, which is comparable to the commercially applied PbTe. These results indicate that high-pressure combing with Cl-doping and PbSe-alloying provide a facile method and strategy to fabricate high-performance PbS-based thermoelectric materials. • Earth-abundant and low-cost thermoelectric compound PbS was facile and fast synthesized by one-step high pressure method. • Cl doping modulates the carrier concentration of PbS and thus optimizes its electrical properties at high temperature. • The chemical bond of PbS was weaken by PbSe alloying, which induces an enhanced Hall mobility near room temperature. • The thermal conductivity of PbS was suppressed sharply by PbSe alloying. • The enhanced zT max and zT avg achieve to 1.0 and 0.67 for PbS 0.747 Cl 0.003 Se 0.25 and PbS 0.497 Cl 0.003 Se 0.5, respectively [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]