Title of Submission
Synthesis of Hafnium-Free Nanostructured Half-Heusler Materials for Thermoelectric Applications
Degree Program
Materials Science and Engineering, MS
Major Advisor Name
Brian Jaques
Type of Submission
Scholarly Poster
Abstract
Half-Heusler thermoelectric materials convert heat directly into electricity by means of the Seebeck effect. Improving the conversion efficiency and reducing fabrication costs will reduce the price per watt enabling widespread commercialization for waste heat energy harvesting and self-powered devices. In this work, a rapid low-cost synthesis route utilizing mechanical alloying via high energy planetary ball milling and spark plasma sintering was used to fabricate n-type hafnium-free single phase nano-grained TiZrNiSnSb based half-heusler monoliths with a modest figure of merit performance with significantly reduced thermal conductivity.
Funding Information
U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, Award DOE NE0008255