@article{40810563426c4001855afa5fb2faf7a7,
title = "High-performance thermoelectric silver selenide thin films cation exchanged from a copper selenide template",
abstract = "Over the past decade, Ag2Se has attracted increasing attention due to its potentially excellent thermoelectric (TE) performance as an n-type semiconductor. It has been considered a promising alternative to Bi-Te alloys and other commonly used yet toxic and/or expensive TE materials. To optimize the TE performance of Ag2Se, recent research has focused on fabricating nanosized Ag2Se. However, synthesizing Ag2Se nanoparticles involves energy-intensive and time-consuming techniques with poor yield of final product. In this work, we report a low-cost, solution-processed approach that enables the formation of Ag2Se thin films from Cu2-xSe template films via cation exchange at room temperature. Our simple two-step method involves fabricating Cu2-xSe thin films by the thiol-amine dissolution of bulk Cu2Se, followed by soaking Cu2-xSe films in AgNO3 solution and annealing to form Ag2Se. We report an average power factor (PF) of 617 ± 82 μW m-1 K-2 and a corresponding ZT value of 0.35 at room temperature. We obtained a maximum PF of 825 μW m-1 K-2 and a ZT value of 0.46 at room temperature for our best-performing Ag2Se thin-film after soaking for 5 minutes. These high PFs have been achieved via full solution processing without hot-pressing.",
author = "Nan Chen and Scimeca, {Michael R.} and Paul, {Shlok J.} and Hafiz, {Shihab B.} and Ze Yang and Xiangyu Liu and Fan Yang and Ko, {Dong Kyun} and Ayaskanta Sahu",
note = "Funding Information: The authors thank the Tandon School of Engineering at New York University for nancial support through start-up funds. The authors also gratefully acknowledge support for instrument use, scientic and technical assistance from the NYU Shared Instrumentation Facility through the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) and MRI Programs of the National Science Foundation under Award Numbers DMR-1420073 and DMR-0923251. The X-ray microdiffractometer with GADDS was acquired through the support of the National Science Foundation under Award Number CRIF/CHE-0840277 and the NSF MRSEC Program under Award Number DMR-0820341. The authors would like to acknowledge the Imaging Facility of Advanced Science Research Center at the Graduate Center of CUNY for instrument use, scientic and technical assistance. The authors would also like to acknowledge the Surface Science Facility at Advanced Science Research Center of Graduate Center in CUNY for instrument use, scientic and technical assistance. Finally, M. R. S. and A. S. would also like to thank the National Science Foundation for support under Award ECCS-1809064, and S. B. H. and D. K. K. would like to thank the National Science Foundation for support under Award ECCS-1809112. Z. Y. and F. Y. acknowledge the start-up support from the Stevens Institute of Technology. Publisher Copyright: This journal is {\textcopyright} The Royal Society of Chemistry.",
year = "2020",
doi = "10.1039/c9na00605b",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "2",
pages = "368--376",
journal = "Nanoscale Advances",
issn = "2516-0230",
publisher = "Royal Society of Chemistry",
number = "1",
}