[10p-N406-1~18] 9.4 Thermoelectric conversion

▲ [10p-N406-2] Systematic Study About the Annealing of Skutterudite Sm_y(Fe_xNi_1-x)₄Sb₁₂ Thin Films

〇(DC)Giovanna Latronico¹, Cristina Artini^2,3, Pietro Manfrinetti², Carlo Fanciulli⁴, Saurabh Singh⁵, Tsunehiro Takeuchi⁵, Paolo Mele¹ (1.Shibaura IT, 2.Univ. of Genova, 3.CNR-ICMATE Genova, 4.CNR-ICMATE Lecco, 5.Toyota Tech. Inst.)

Keywords:Skutterudites, Thin Films, Annealing

This work is aimed to accomplish a systematic study regarding the annealing of thermoelectric (TE) skutterudites thin films prepared by the Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) method. Three batches of thin films of different compositions (Sm_y(Fe_xNi_1-x)₄Sb₁₂ with x = 0.50, 0.63 and 0.70) were deposited on fused silica under vacuum (10^-4 Pa) at room temperature. Later, every sample of each composition underwent an annealing process varying the temperature (150°C to 300°C) and the time (3 and 6 h). Room temperature Seebeck (S) was measured by means of a PTM-3 portable device and XRD analysis was performed as well. A temperature of 300°C is causing the degradation of the sample, while 250°C has the best effect on the S: the higher S is 71.2 mV/K for the x = 0.63 sample annealed at 250 °C for 6 hours. All XRD patterns show the transition from an amorphous to a crystalline structure as a consequence of the annealing process. Further characterizations will be reported at the conference.