Fabrication and Characterization of PbSnTe Crystals for Thermoelectric Applications
Authors: Sopheap Sam, Sreypich Say, Laurence A. Gan Lim, Alexander C. Abad, and Gil Nonato C. Santos
Abstract
PbSnTe crystals were grown using the horizontal vapor phase growth (HVPG) method with growth temperature of 1000 C and 1200 C and growth time of four and eight hours where its surface morphology and elemental compositions were analyzed using the Phenom ProX Desktop SEM with EDS. The effect of the interaction term between growth temperature and growth time with respect to the figure of merit ZT was analyzed using the Design of Expert software, where the p-values obtained was significant. At room temperature, the high figure of merit was approximately 0.084, which can be correlated from the formation of the cubic crystals that was grown at 1200 C for four hours.