Thermoelectric effects are phenomena found in materials that can achieve direct conversion between heat flow and electricity. One important application of thermoelectric effects is thermoelectric generators, which can generate electricity when a temperature gradient is applied. Thermoelectric generators make use of various sources of heat and it is considered a promising solution for waste heat recovery.The conversion efficiency of thermoelectric generators depends on the materials used in the devices. Significant improvement in the performance of thermoelectric materials has been made in the past few decades. However, most of the good thermoelectric materials being investigated have limitations, such as the high materials cost, high materials density and toxicity of the constituent elements. The Mg2(Si,Sn)-based materials studied in this work are promising candidates for thermoelectric generators in the mid-temperature range and have drawn increasing research interest in recent years because these materials are high performance thermoelectrics that are low cost, low-density and non-toxic.In this work, systematic studies were performed on the Mg2(Si,Sn) thermoelectric materials. Thermal phase stability was studied for different compositions of Mg2Si1-xSnx and Mg2Si0.4Sn0.6 was used as base material for further optimization. Both n-type and p-type samples were obtained by doping the materials with different elements. Peak ZT ~ 1.5 for the n-type and ZT ~ 0.7 for the p-type materials were obtained, both of which are among the best reported results so far.Experimental work was also done to study the techniques to develop the Mg2Si0.4Sn0.6 materials into working devices. Different electrode materials were tested in bonding experiment for this compound, and copper was found to be the best electrode material for Mg2Si0.4Sn0.6. Preliminary work was done to demonstrate the possibility of fabricating a Mg2Si0.4Sn0.6-based thermoelectric generator and the result is promising.
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