Silver intercalation in SPS dense TiS2: staging and thermoelectric properties

Polycrystalline samples in the series AgxTiS2 with x varying from 0 to 0.2 were prepared using solid-liquid-vapor reaction and spark plasma sintering. Depending on the x content, it is found that different stages can occur with intercalation, from the so-called 1T-TiS2 (stage 1) to ordered Ag1/6TiS2 (stage 2). Randomly intercalated Ag cations in the van der Waals gap of stage 1 and stage 2 based TiS2 structures induce a strong decrease of lattice thermal conductivity through structural disorder. A decrease in electrical resistivity and the absolute value of the Seebeck coefficient with increasing Ag content supports also the charge transfer to the Ti 3d conduction band, enhancing the power factor in the specific temperature range. Thus, the combined effects of Ag intercalation are beneficial to the improvement in ZT, reaching around 0.45 at 700 K in Ag intercalated compounds.