Thermoelectric properties of individual electrodeposited bismuth telluride nanowires

For an electrodeposited bismuth telluride (BixTe1−x) nanowire from one batch with x found to be about 0.46, the Seebeck coefficient (S) was measured to be 15%–60% larger than the bulk values at temperature 300K. For four other nanowires from a different batch with x≈0.54, S was much smaller than the bulk values. The electrical conductivity of the nanowires showed unusually weak temperature dependence and the values at 300K were close to the bulk values. Below 300K, phonon-boundary scattering dominated phonon-phonon Umklapp scattering in the nanowires, reducing the lattice thermal conductivity.