Research Projects

The excessive consumption of fossil-based fuels and their associated environmental pollution from its outlet residuals have raised the global warming to the critical limits. Alongside, the scarcity in the fossil fuel reserves is alarming the need for the alternative energy resources for the future. In this context, thermoelectric (TE) technology is spearheading and promising among the various renewable harvesting technologies. Synthesis and suitable tailoring of inherent chemistry and introduction of nanoscale grain features in any thermoelectric semiconductors or alloys lead towards the superior figure of merit. At present, there is a significant rise in interest in the production and study of thermoelectric energy converters, which can be associated with the development of new technological possibilities for their synthesis, which make it possible to overcome the fundamental restrictions on the limiting values of the efficiency of converters. First of all, such technologies include the spark plasma sintering (SPS) method in its various modifications - this is a technology that makes it possible to obtain thermoelectric materials on an industrial scale with an efficiency factor of 20-50% higher than analogues. An increase in efficiency increases the competitiveness of thermoelectric energy sources in comparison with other methods of alternative energy. For semiconductor compounds (which constitute the vast majority of thermoelectric materials), the problems of describing the processes of structure formation during pressing and heating of powders are still far from being solved. A deeper understanding of the physics and chemistry of sintering as applied to thermoelectric materials will make it possible to more effectively control the properties of the formed energy converters and, thus, realize all the advantages of the technology for obtaining thermoelectric with the best thermoelectric coefficients. The element of novelty - technological - will be the introduction of new, previously unused materials into the sintering technology. In particular, for the first time it is planned to use silicon and germanium phosphides and arsenides for doping the Si-Ge solid solution. The attractiveness of these materials lies in their non-toxicity and high solubility in Si and Ge. Silicon-Germanium (SiGe) based alloys are the promising and an attractive thermoelectric candidate in radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) in high temperature (>1000°C) application. Intensive efforts are being made to synthesize homogenous SiGe alloys to enhance the figure of merit (ZT) and mechanical property. Thus, the project offers a deep analysis of the synthesis processes of thermoelectric materials in the method of spark plasma sintering, which will result in technological optimization of the thermoelectric materials production in terms of the figure of merit.