Thermoelectric characterization of nanostructured selenium doped bismuth telluride obtained by a solution route

Thermoelectric devices offer a reliable all solid state solution to active temperature control and are more and more considered as a promising way for thermal management of Integrated Circuits. However, low material performances still represent a hurdle to the spreading of such devices for high power electronics cooling. Enhanced performances bulk materials are needed to access high performance board level cooling, and at the same time very stable processes are needed to ensure repeatability of the materials performances for large scale production. Assembly of nanoparticles obtained by a solution route is an attractive bulk fabrication method in this regard. However, to be effective this solution must give access to fine control of the composition of the material as well. We studied the synthesis of selenium substituted bismuth telluride nanoparticles using a scalable process and characterized the electronic and thermoelectric transport properties of the materials obtained by sintering of these particles.