State Key Laboratory of Crystal Materials, Shandong University, Jinan, 250100, P. R., China
Institute of Photoelectron and Devices, Shandong University, Jinan, 250100, P. R., China
Abstract:
A new method called melt-freeze-annealing has been developed to fabricate polycrystalline thermoelectric LaFe3CoSb12 The melting and annealing temperatures as well as the freezing style all can affect the phase content, porosity and grain size of skutterudite polycrystalline materials. The use of a higher melting temperature and a appropriate buffer temperature with annealing at about 700°C are the best conditions for fabricating the LaFe3CoSb12 polycrystalline materials. The polycrystalline skutterudite materials fabricated by a melt-freeze-annealing procedure possessed high skutterudute content, fine grain size and very low porosity, and are suitable for thermoelectric usage.