Thermoelectric properties of copper-deficient Cu2-Se (0.05 ≤ x ≤ 0.25) binary compounds

Recently, many novel superionic thermoelectric materials have been discovered along the concept of “phonon-liquid electron-crystal” (PLEC). Among them, Cu2-xSe-based liquid-like materials are typical examples. In this study, a series of copper-deficient Cu2-xSe (0.05 ≤ x ≤ 0.25) materials were synthesized and used to study the role of Cu vacancies on the electrical and thermal transport properties. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements suggest that the valence states of Cu and Se are independent on the Cu/Se atomic ratio. With increasing the content of Cu vacancies, the hole concentration is monotonously increased, leading to the improved electrical conductivity and reduced Seebeck coefficient. Based on the single parabolic band model analysis, it is found that changing the content of Cu vacancies does not obviously modify the material's electronic band structure and effective mass. Due to the presence of highly mobile Cu ions inside the crystal structure, the lattice thermal conductivities of all Cu2-xSe (0.05 ≤ x ≤ 0.25) materials are very low with values around 0.39 W m−1 K−1 at 500 K. Because of the significantly reduced Seebeck coefficient and increased electronic thermal conductivity, the thermoelectric figure of merit zTs are decreased when increasing x from 0.05 to 0.25. At 750 K, a maximum zT of 0.46 is obtained in Cu1.95Se among all Cu2-xSe (0.05 ≤ x ≤ 0.25) materials.