Effect of Sintering Temperature on the Thermoelectric Properties of Bismuth Antimony Telluride Prepared by Spark Plasma Sintering

Bismuth antimony telluride (BiSbTe) thermoelectric materials were successfully prepared by a spark plasma sintering process. Crystalline BiSbTe ingots were crushed into small pieces and then attrition milled into fine powders of about 300 nm ~ 2 size under argon gas. Spark plasma sintering was applied on the BiSbTe powders at 240, 320, and , respectively, under a pressure of 40 MPa in vacuum. The heating rate was /min and the holding time at the sintering temperature was 10 min. At all sintering temperatures, high density bulk BiSbTe was successfully obtained. The XRD patterns verify that all samples were well matched with the . Seebeck coefficient (S), electric conductivity () and thermal conductivity (k) were evaluated in a temperature range of . The thermoelectric properties of BiSbTe were evaluated by the thermoelectric figure of merit, ZT (ZT