Ag₈SiTe₆: A New Thermoelectric Material with Low Thermal Conductivity

Abstract

Here, we introduce a new thermoelectric material: Ag8SiTe6. Ag8SiTe6 indicated p-type semiconductor characteristics. The crystal structure of Ag8SiTe6 was quite complicated, which led to a very low thermal conductivity of 0.23 W m-1 K-1 at room temperature. A relatively high thermoelectric figure of merit of 0.48 was obtained at 800 K, which was mainly due to the very low thermal conductivity.