Cold Sintering Mediated Engineering of Polycrystalline SnSe with High Thermoelectric Efficiency

Despite the attractive thermoelectric properties in single crystals, the fabrication of high-performance polycrystalline SnSe by a cost-effective strategy remains challenging. In this study, we prepare the undoped SnSe ceramic with remarkable thermoelectric efficiency by the combination of a cold sintering process (CSP) and thermal annealing. The high sintering pressure during CSP induces not only highly oriented grains but also a high concentration of lattice dislocations and stacking faults, which leads to large lattice strain that can shorten the phonon relaxation time. Meanwhile, the thermal annealing breaks the highly resistive SnO layers at grain boundaries, which improves the electrical conductivity and power factor. In addition, the grain growth during annealing further turns the broken SnO layers into nanoparticles, which further lowers the thermal conductivity by enhanced scattering. As a result, a peak ZT of 1.3 at 890 K and a high average ZT of 0.69 are achieved in the polycrystalline SnSe, suggesting great potential in mid-temperature power generation. This work may pave the way for the mass production of SnSe-based ceramics for thermoelectric devices.