Enhanced thermoelectric performance realized in AgBiS2 composited AgBiSe2 through indium doping and mechanical alloying

AgBiSe2 is deemed as a decent candidate of state-of-arts thermoelectric lead chalcogenides due to its intrinsically low lattice thermal conductivity. In this work, we report that a peak figure of merit of ∼0.9 can be realized at 773 K in n-type AgBiSe2 when it is simultaneously doped with indium and composited with AgBiS2 through the ball milling process. The enhancement of thermoelectric performance of AgBiSe2 largely comes from the significant reduction of thermal conductivity from ∼0.5 W/mK to 0.33 W/mK at 773 K, which is the record low value ever reported in this specific system. The decrease in thermal conductivity can be ascribed to the combination of grain size reduction and enhanced alloy scattering from S-Se substitution during the high energy ball milling processes.