Improvement of Thermoelectric Material by Reduction Thermal Conductivity of Sn-doped CuFeO2 Delafossite Compound

In this work, the polycrystalline CuFe1-xSnxO2 (x = 0.005, 0.01, 0.03) were synthesized by a solid state reaction method with sintering temperature at 1323K for 40 hours. The XRD pattern and TGA results showed the crystal structure of hexagonal delafossite-type structure for space group (166). Thermal conductivity was decreased because the large atomic mass of the Sn substituted to the Fe sites of CuFeO2. This caused phonon scattering by the point defect of the mass difference between Sn atom and Fe atom. The minimal value of the thermal conductivity was 2.1 W/mK at 573K for Sn = 0.03.