Thermal expansion of skutterudites

The current paper gives an overview of the newly obtained thermal expansion coefficients of skutterudites as well as those so far available in literature. Thermal expansion was determined for CoSb3, Pt4Sn4.4Sb7.6, for As- and Ge-based skutterudites as well as for various high-ZT skutterudites (micro- and nanostructured) with didymium (DD) and mischmetal (Mm) as filler atoms in frameworks of (Fe1−xCox)4Sb12 and (Fe1−xNix)4Sb12, and for double and triple-filled skutterudites such as Ca0.07Ba0.23Co3.95Ni0.05Sb12 and Sr0.025Ba0.075Yb0.1Co4Sb12. For low temperatures, a capacitance dilatometer was used (4–300 K), whereas for temperatures 300skutterudites, lattice parameters of single crystals, measured at three different temperatures, were used to derive the thermal expansion coefficient. The semiclassical model of Mukherjee [Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 1876 (1996)] has been successfully used to quantitatively describe the thermal...