Synthesis and transport property of AgSbTe2 as a promising thermoelectric compound

Polycrystalline AgSbTe2 ternary compound materials with high phase purity were fabricated using a combined process of mechanical alloying and spark plasma sintering. It was found that stoichiometric AgSbTe2 is a promising composition for low-and-mediate temperature applications, whose ZT reaches 1.59 at 673K, benefiting from its extremely low thermal conductivity (0.30W∕mK) in addition to its low electrical resistivity (<1.1×10−4Ωm) and large positive Seebeck coefficient (260μV∕K). On the other hand, deviating from this formula would lead to unstable phase structures and higher thermal conductivity, which make the samples less attractive as thermoelectric materials or components of thermoelectric systems.