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Published October 28, 2015 | Published
Journal Article Open

Interfacial reactions between PbTe-based thermoelectric materials and Cu and Ag bonding materials

Abstract

The development of reliable bonding materials for PbTe-based thermoelectric modules that can undergo long-term operations at high temperature is carried out. Two cost-effective materials, Cu and Ag, are isothermally hot-pressed to PbTe-based thermoelectric materials at 550 °C for 3 h under a pressure of 40 MPa by the rapid hot-pressing method. Scanning electron microscopy, electron probe micro-analysis, and X-ray diffraction analysis are employed to identify intermetallic compounds, chemical reactions, and microstructure evolution after the initial assembly and subsequent isothermal aging at 400 °C and 550 °C. We find that Cu diffuses faster than Ag in PbTe. Neither Cu nor Ag is a good bonding material because they both react vigorously with Pb_(0.6)Sn_(0.4)Te. In order to be able to use Cu electrodes, it would be necessary to insert a diffusion barrier to prevent Cu diffusion into PbTe.

Additional Information

© 2015 The Royal Society of Chemistry. Received 6th June 2015, Accepted 6th August 2015, First published online 06 Aug 2015. This study is supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (101-2221-E-002-162-MY3), National Taiwan University (103R891804), the Electronics and Optoelectronics Research Laboratories of Industrial Technology Research Institute, the Caltech DOW-Bridge program, and the EFRC Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center (S3TEC) award number DE-SC0001299.

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August 20, 2023
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