The nanostructures induced by uniaxial compression in bulk thermoelectric material is reported. High-resolution transmission electron microscope images reveal that the nanostructures consist of crystals and minicrystal/noncrystal with grain sizes about . It is shown that the Seebeck coefficient is increased by 21%, the phonon thermal conductivity is reduced by 19%, while the electrical conductivity rises slightly at . This leads to a surprising increase in the power factor by 51%. The significant increase of Seebeck coefficient and the remarkable reduction of phonon thermal conductivity are believed to be due to quantum effect and size effect of the nanostructures, respectively.
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2006
American Institute of Physics
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