Abstract:
Thermoelectric materials are those materials, which can directly converts a temperature
difference into a useful electric energy. Looking forward to the applications of such a
material, this project mainly aims at investigating naive Thermoelectric materials based
on Indium and Tin. As part of the project, Indium based delafossites and Sn based
perovskites where synthesized using solid state reactions and reactive flux method. The
structural analysis was done by using powder XRD and SEM. The optical band gap for
this materials were calculated from the Tauc’s plot and thermal conductivity is measured
using TTO in PPMS. NaInO2 has the least thermal conductivity and optical band
gap. After analysis we chose NaInO2 as the best candidate for further doping with aim
to tune its properties for a Thermoelectric material. We doped the samples with hole
and electron and studied the electronic and thermal conductivity of these samples. We
found that 10% & 15% doped compounds could be good thermoelectrics at high temperatures.
NaInO2, 10% & 15% doped compounds have very low thermal conductivity
below room temperature, which is far less than the thermal conductivity of conventional
thermoelectric materials.
