Simen N. H. Eliassen | Searcharxiv

arXiv2017

The role of grain boundary scattering in reducing the thermal conductivity of polycrystalline XNiSn (X = Hf, Zr, Ti) half-Heusler alloys

Thermoelectric application of half-Heusler compounds suffers from their fairly high thermal conductivities. Insight into how effective various scattering mechanisms are in reducing the thermal conductivity of fabricated XNiSn compounds (X = Hf, Zr, Ti, and mixtures thereof) is therefore crucial. Here, we show that such insight can be obtained through a concerted theory-experiment comparison of how the lattice thermal conductivity kLat(T) depends on temperature and crystallite size. Comparing theory and experiment for a range of Hf0.5Zr0.5NiSn and ZrNiSn samples reported in the literature and in the present paper revealed that grain boundary scattering plays the most important role in bringing down kLat, in particular so for unmixed compounds. Our concerted analysis approach was corroborated by a good qualitative agreement between the measured and calculated kLat of polycrystalline samples, where the experimental average crystallite size was used as an input parameter for the calculations. The calculations were based on the Boltzmann transport equation and ab initio density functional theory. Our analysis explains the significant variation of reported kLat of nominally identical XNiSn samples and is expected to provide valuable insights into the dominant scattering mechanisms even for other materials.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2017

Lattice thermal conductivity of Ti$_x$Zr$_y$Hf$_{1-x-y}$NiSn half-Heusler alloys calculated from first principles: Key role of nature of phonon modes

In spite of their relatively high lattice thermal conductivity $κ_{\ell}$, the XNiSn (X=Ti, Zr or Hf) half-Heusler compounds are good thermoelectric materials. Previous studies have shown that $κ_{\ell}$ can be reduced by sublattice-alloying on the X-site. To cast light on how the alloy composition affects $κ_\ell$, we study this system using the phonon Boltzmann-transport equation within the relaxation time approximation in conjunction with density functional theory.The effect of alloying through mass-disorder scattering is explored using the virtual crystal approximation to screen the entire ternary Ti$_x$Zr$_{y}$Hf$_{1-x-y}$NiSn phase diagram. The lowest lattice thermal conductivity is found for the Ti$_x$Hf$_{1-x}$NiSn compositions; in particular, there is a shallow minimum centered at Ti$_{0.5}$Hf$_{0.5}$NiSn with $κ_l$ taking values between 3.2 and 4.1 W/mK when the Ti content varies between 20 and 80\%. Interestingly, the overall behavior of mass-disorder scattering in this system can only be understood from a combination of the nature of the phonon modes and the magnitude of the mass variance. Mass-disorder scattering is not effective at scattering acoustic phonons of low energy. By using a simple model of grain boundary scattering, we find that nanostructuring these compounds can scatter such phonons effectively and thus further reduce the lattice thermal conductivity; for instance, Ti$_{0.5}$Hf$_{0.5}$NiSn with a grain size of $L= 100$ nm experiences a 42\% reduction of $κ_{\ell}$ compared to that of the single crystal.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗