ICT2014 Abstracts

In phonon drag systems like FeSb₂ and CrSb₂, although thermal conductivity can be reduced by the method of nanostructuring, Seebeck coefficient also drops significantly for the polycrystalline and nanostructured samples. The power factor of the nanostructured samples is much smaller than the reported value for single crystal and hence there is a very small enhancement in thermoelectric figure of merit. The method of modulation doping using Cu nanoparticles gave some improvement for the thermoelectric properties in FeSb₂. It has been reported that some rare earth Kondo systems have very high power factors but the thermoelectric figure of merit is very low due to normally a large thermal conductivity. We have shown that nanostructuring of rare earth Kondo systems can decrease the thermal conductivity without too much affecting the electrical transport properties, and very high power factor can be maintained for nanostructured rare earth Kondo systems with significantly reduced thermal conductivity.