Ghosh Abhishek, Ahmad Mujeeb, Bisht Prashant, Mehta Bodh Raj
Thin Film Laboratory, Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi 110016, India.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2021 Mar 24;13(11):13226-13234. doi: 10.1021/acsami.0c22805. Epub 2021 Mar 11.
Hot energy carrier filtering as a means to improve the thermoelectric (TE) property in SbTe thin film samples having size-selected Au nanoparticles (NPs) is investigated in the present study. Nonagglomerated Au NPs with a very narrow size distribution grown by an integrated gas-phase synthesis setup are incorporated into the SbTe thin film synthesized by RF magnetron sputtering. TE properties have been investigated as a function of size-selected Au NP concentrations and compared with that of a nanocomposite sample having non-size-selected Au NPs. An increase in the Seebeck coefficient and power factor, along with a slight decrease in electrical conductivity, is observed for samples with a NP size of minimum variance. Further, the Kelvin probe force microscopy and conducting atomic force microscopy techniques were employed to understand the nature of the interface and charge transport across the SbTe matrix and Au NPs. The study provides an opportunity to modulate the TE properties in SbTe thin films by constructing a metal-semiconductor heterostructure through controlling the concentration and randomness to achieve a high TE performance.
本研究考察了热载流子过滤作为一种改善具有尺寸选择金纳米颗粒（NP）的SbTe薄膜样品热电（TE）性能的手段。通过集成气相合成装置生长的具有非常窄尺寸分布的非团聚金纳米颗粒被掺入通过射频磁控溅射合成的SbTe薄膜中。研究了TE性能与尺寸选择的金纳米颗粒浓度的函数关系，并与具有非尺寸选择金纳米颗粒的纳米复合样品进行了比较。对于具有最小方差NP尺寸的样品，观察到塞贝克系数和功率因数增加，同时电导率略有下降。此外，采用开尔文探针力显微镜和导电原子力显微镜技术来了解SbTe基体和金纳米颗粒之间的界面性质和电荷传输。该研究提供了一个通过控制浓度和随机性构建金属-半导体异质结构来调节SbTe薄膜中的TE性能，以实现高TE性能的机会。
