Due to air pollution, global warming and energy shortage demands new clean energy conversion technologies. The conversion of industrial waste heat into useful electricity using thermoelectric (TE) technology is a promising method in recent decades. Still, its applications are limited by the low efficiency of TE materials in the operating range between 400-600 K. In this work, we have fabricated Cu0.005Bi0.5Sb1.495Te3 powder using a single step gas atomization process followed by spark plasma sintering at different temperatures (623, 673, 723, and 773 K), and their thermoelectric properties were investigated. The variation of sintering temperature showed a significant impact on the grain size. The Seebeck coefficient values at room temperature increased significantly from 127 μVK to 151 μV/K with increasing sintering temperature from 623 K to 723 K due to decreased carrier concentration. The maximum ZT values for the four samples were similar in the range between 1.15 to 1.18 at 450 K, which suggest these materials could be used for power generation in the mid-temperature range (400-600 K).

The dispersion of nanoparticles in the host matrix is a novel approach to enhance the thermoelectric performance. In this work, we incorporate the TiC (x = 0, 1 and 2 wt.%) nanoparticles into a p-type Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 matrix, and their effects on microstructure and thermoelectric properties were systematically investigated. The existence of TiC contents in a base matrix was confirmed by energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analysis. The grain size decreases with increasing the addition of TiC content due to grain boundary hardening where the dispersed nanoparticles acted as pinning points in the entire matrix. The electrical conductivity significantly decreased and the Seebeck coefficient was slightly enhanced, which attributes to the decrease in carrier concentration by the addition of TiC content. Meanwhile, the lowest thermal conductivity of 0.97 W/mK for the 2 wt.% TiC nanocomposite sample, which is ~16% lower than 0 wt.% TiC sample. The maximum figure of merit of 0.90 was obtained at 350 K for the 0 wt.% TiC sample due to high electrical conductivity. Moreover, the Vickers hardness was improved with increase the addition of TiC contents.