Revealing the promising near-room-temperature thermoelectric performance in Ag_(2)Se single crystals

With high carrier mobility and intrinsic low lattice thermal conductivity,Ag_(2)Se compounds have attracted increasing attention for thermoelectric application near room temperature.Due to its phase transition at~406 K and resulting thermal volume expansion,the growth and thermoelectric properties of large-sized Ag_(2)Se single crystals have seldom been reported so far.In this work,the vertical Bridgeman method was used for growing bulk Ag_(2)Se single crystal,with an orientation preference along lowsymmetric(201)plane.The Hall mobility as high as 2000 cm^(2)/(V·s)and weak electron-phonon coupling contributes to a high electronic quality BE of~7.0 in near-room-temperature b-Ag_(2)Se single crystals,which is superior to the high-temperature phase a-Ag_(2)Se.The observed low lattice thermal conductivity of 0.8 W/(m·K)at 300 K is due to the low group speeds and strong anharmonicity.A promising peak zT of 0.66 at 375 K and an average zT of 0.65 at 300-375 K were realized in b-Ag_(2)Se crystals.The low Vickers hardness and good ductile properties were confirmed by experiment and theoretical analysis.This work not only synthesized large-sized and highly-orientated Ag_(2)Se crystals,but also revealed its great potential of thermoelectric performance and mechanical properties for various applications near room temperature.