Properties of thermoelectric materials prepared by gas atomizing and sintering process

The development of mass production process of thermoelectric materials is important for practical use. For this purpose, it has been attempted to produce and estimate the thermoelectric materials of CoSb ₃, (CoPdPt)Sb₃ and CeFe₃CoSb₁₂ prepared by gas atomizing and sintering. It is clear that the mean diameter of gas atomized particles obtained in this work is not only less than 100 μm, but also the inner structure of particles is very fine. For the sintering method, hot pressing process and noteworthy spark plasma sintering technique for new materials were applied. In both treatments, it is apparent that there is a difference in grain boundary structure observed by optical microscope and in time required to obtain enough sintered condition. There however is no remarkable distinction of thermoelectric properties between hot press sintered and spark plasma sintered materials, of which atomic structures and compositions are almost same as a results of X-ray diffraction and EPMA analysis