Aligning Crystal Orientation of Poly-Crystalline Bi-Te With a High Magnetic Field

We investigated the effect of aligning crystal orientation in the microstructures containing sub micro-sized grains on the thermoelectric properties for polycrystalline Bi-Te materials.Bi-Te powder,prepared through the conventional pulverization process,was sufficiently dispersed in an appropriate solvent,and then was formed into c-axis aligned green bodies under a designated high magnetic field.The green bodies were sintered with spark-plasma-sintering machine.The degree of crystal alignment of sintered bodies was examined with the electron-back-scatter-diffraction SEM and the X-ray diffraction patterns.It was observed that for both p and n type thermoelectric Bi-Te materials,aligning crystal orientation properly made electrical resistivity decreased with keeping Seebeck coefficient and thermal conductivity remained unchanged.As a typical result,the aligned Bi-Te material with the magnetic field of 10 tesla showed 30%enhancement of the thermoelectric performance.