A recent paper of Huang Xueqin，a senior student of SUSTech’s physics department , entitled Origin of the Enhancement in Transport Properties on Polycrystalline SnSe with Compositing Two-Dimensional Material MoSe20 has been published in the renowned magazine Nanotechnology (2015 Impact Factor: 3.573). The paper elaborates the findings of her research on the thermal conductivities of SnSe.

Huang participated in the project in her junior year under the guidance of He Jiaqing, Dean of the Department of Physics. At the 35^th International Conference on Thermoelectrics in 2016, Huang presented her preliminary findings on the poster of the conference.

In recent years, academics have been trying to find an accessible, nontoxic and efficient thermoelectric material. Being relatively cheap, abundant and low-toxic, SnSe has attracted wide attention. Although single-crystalline SnSe has excellent thermoelectric properties, polycrystalline SnSe’s performance is less satisfactory due to low carrier concentration. Hence, how to enhance the thermoelectric properties of polycrystalline SnSe has become a hot topic. Huang’s paper shows that introducing MoSe₂ into the SnSe matrix can improve the carrier concentration and the carrier mobility simultaneously, thus increasing the conductivity and ZT. Composite engineering is an effective approach to strengthen the properties of thermoelectric materials by adjusting the amount of elements to the right number. It is also indicated in the paper that at 1.5% MoSe₂, the maximum ZT is obtained, which is 1.5 times as large as that of the pristine SnSe.

Link of the paper:

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6528/aa55e3/meta