Effects of Zn Doping on the Thermoelectrical Properties of GeTe Alloy

With high energy ball milling and direct current rapid hot pressing technology, the sampels of Zn_xGe_1-xTe alloys (x=0, 0.01, 0.02, 0.03, 0.04) were fabricated. The microstructures of the samples were characterized and the effects of Zn doping on thermoelectric properties of GeTe alloy were studied. The results indicate that all the samples are consolidated in single GeTe phase. In a certain extent, doping with Zn can improve the thermoelectric performance of GeTe material. The samples of Zn_0.02Ge_0.98Te and Zn_0.03Ge_0.97Te show better thermoelectrical performance among all the samples, whose peak ZT values reached 1.4 and 1.33 at 773 K respectively.