THE INFLUENCE OF SINGLE WALLED CARBON NANOTUBES ON THE THERMOELECTRIC PROPERTIES OF P-TYPE BISMUTH TELLURIDE COMPOSITE

Abstract

The most important thermoelectric materials for applications close to room temperature are made of bismuth telluride. The number of applications for these materials, however, is constrained by their extremely low heat conversion efficiencies. Single Walled Carbon Nanotubes (SWCNTs) are employed as a nanofiller in this work to create a p-type bismuth telluride nanocomposite with the composition Bi0.4Sb1.6Te3. Ball milling was used to prepare the samples with various SWCNTs concentrations for a total milling time of 16 hours. According to the findings, the addition of SWCNTs enhanced the thermoelectric characteristics of p-type bismuth telluride. The addition of SWCNTs raised ZT at room temperature by 5% (from 0.86 to 0.90) for the optimal sample (0.05 wt.% SWCNTs),. At 150 °C, ZT improved by 4 %, achieving a value of 1.26 for the same sample (0.05 wt.% SWCNTs). Consequently, demonstrating that SWCNTs may improve the thermoelectric characteristics of the p-type bismuth telluride samples.