High Temperature Thermal Conductivity Measurements of Quasicrystalline Al70.8Pd20.9Mn8.3

We report measurements of the thermal conductivity on a potential high temperature thermoelectric material, the quasicrystal Al70.8Pd20.9Mn8.3. Thermal conductivity is determined over a temperature range from 30 K to 600 K, using both the steady state gradient method and the 3ω method. Measurements of high temperature thermal conductivity are extremely difficult using standard heat conduction techniques. These difficulties arise from the fact that heat is lost due to radiative effects. The radiative effects are proportional to the temperature of the sample to the fourth power and therefore can lead to large errors in the measured thermal conductivity of the sample, becoming more serious as the temperature increases. For thermoelectric applications in the high temperature regime, the thermal conductivity is an extremely important parameter to determine. The 3ω technique minimizes radiative heat loss terms, which will allow for more accurate determination of the thermal conductivity of Al70.8Pd20.9Mn8.3 at high temperatures. The results obtained using the 3ω method are compared to results from a standard bulk-thermalconductivity-technique on the same samples over the temperature range, 30 K to 300 K.