Thermoelectric characteristics of the spark plasma-sintered silicon boride ceramics

Silicon boride () is very promising for use as thermoelectric materials at high temperature because of its high melting point and relatively large Seebeck coefficient. In the present work, spark plasma sintering (SPS) was applied for preparing dense ceramics, and their thermoelectric properties were investigated, together with their microstructural evaluation. The SPS process was found to be effective in densifying a ceramic, typically 99 % of the theoretical density at low temperature of . In comparison with specimen prepared by hot-pressing, the SPS-processed specimen exhibited the significantly improved Seebeck coefficient, resulting in the higher power factor.