Performance of Skutterudite-Based Modules

• Published in: Journal of electronic materials Vol. 46; no. 5; pp. 2640 - 2644
• Main Authors: Nie, G., Suzuki, S., Tomida, T., Sumiyoshi, A., Ochi, T., Mukaiyama, K., Kikuchi, M., Guo, J. Q., Yamamoto, A., Obara, H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01-05-2017; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Characterization and Evaluation of Materials; Chemistry and Materials Science; Efficiency; Electric properties; Electronics and Microelectronics; Instrumentation; Materials Science; Optical and Electronic Materials; Solid State Physics; Temperature; Skutterudite; efficiency; stability; module
• ISSN: 0361-5235; 1543-186X
• DOI: 10.1007/s11664-016-4849-y

Due to their excellent thermoelectric (TE) performance, skutterudite materials have been selected by many laboratories and companies for development of TE modules to recover power from waste heat at high temperatures (300°C to 600°C). After years of effort, we have developed reliable
n
- and
p
-type skutterudite materials showing maximum figure of merit (
ZT
) of 1.0 at 550°C and 0.75 at 450°C, respectively. In this work, we systematically investigated the performance of a module made using these two kinds of skutterudite. We demonstrate ∼7.2% conversion efficiency for temperature of 600°C at the hot side of the module and 50°C at the cold side, and show that the module had excellent stability in the high-temperature environment. Further improving the TE performance of our skutterudites, the conversion efficiency reached ∼8.5% under the same condition.