Highly enhanced thermoelectric and mechanical properties of Bi 2 Te 3 hybrid nanocomposite with inclusion of Pt nanoparticles and SWCNTs

In this work, an approach of a hybrid inclusion of Pt nanoparticles and single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) in a bismuth telluride (Bi 2 Te 3 ) matrix is developed to enhance the thermoelectric and micromechanical properties. The Pt-SWCNTs/Bi 2 Te 3 nanocomposite films (up to 0.9 wt% of Pt nanoparticles with 4.8 wt% of SWCNTs) have been synthesized using a three-electrode potentiostatic electrodeposition system. A substantial enhancement of the thermoelectric power factor at 0.6 wt% of the Pt nanoparticles was recorded due to a large increment of Seebeck coefficient. The measured thermal conductivity values indicated 68% of reduction resulted from a large phonon scattering. These improvements result in a remarkable enhancement on overall thermoelectric performance with the figure of merit, ZT value reaching 0.99 at room temperature. Meanwhile, in micromechanical analysis, the hardness and Young’ modulus values of the nanocomposite increased about 1.5 times and 3.4 times higher than those of a pristine Bi 2 Te 3 film, respectively. Graphical abstract