Electrical and thermal transport behaviours of high-entropy perovskite thermoelectric oxides

Oxide-based ceramics could be promising thermoelectric materials because of their thermal and chemical stability at high temperature.However,their mediocre electrical conductivity or high thermal conductivity is still a challenge for the use in commercial devices.Here,we report significantly suppressed thermal conductivity in SrTiO_(3)-based thermoelectric ceramics via high-entropy strategy for the first time,and optimized electrical conductivity by defect engineering.In high-entropy(Ca_(0.2)Sr_(0.2)Ba_(0.2)Pb_(0.2)La_(0.2))TiO_(3)bulks,the minimum thermal conductivity can be 1.17 W/(m·K)at 923 K,which should be ascribed to the large lattice distortion and the huge mass fluctuation effect.The power factor can reach about 295μW/(m·K^(2))by inducing oxygen vacancies.Finally,the ZT value of 0.2 can be realized at 873 K in this bulk sample.This approach proposed a new concept of high entropy into thermoelectric oxides,which could be generalized for designing high-performance thermoelectric oxides with low thermal conductivity.