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Updated: Dec 26, 2025

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Published on: May 17, 2024
Realizing p-type NbCoSn half-Heusler compounds with enhanced thermoelectric performance via Sc substitution
Ruijuan Yan1, Wenjie Xie1, Benjamin Balke2
1Department of Materials Science, Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany.
Abstract:
N-type half-Heusler NbCoSn is a promising thermoelectric material due to favourable electronic properties. It has attracted much attention for thermoelectric applications while the desired p-type NbCoSn counterpart shows poor thermoelectric performance. In this work, p-type NbCoSn has been obtained using Sc substitution at the Nb site, and their thermoelectric properties were investigated. Of all samples, Nb0.95Sc0.05CoSn compound shows a maximum power factor of 0.54 mW/mK2 which is the highest among the previously reported values of p-type NbCoSn. With the suppression of thermal conductivity, p-type Nb0.95Sc0.05CoSn compound shows the highest measured figure of merit ZT = 0.13 at 879 K.
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