Polycrystalline SnSe with extraordinary thermoelectric property via nanoporous design

Nanoporous materials possess low thermal conductivities derived from effective phonon scatterings at grain boundaries and interfaces. Thus nanoporous thermoelectric materials have full potential to improve their thermoelectric performance. Here we report a high ZT of 1.7 ± 0.2 at 823 K in p-type nanoporous polycrystalline SnSe fabricated via a facile solvothermal route. We successfully induce indium selenides (InSey) nanoprecipitates in the as-synthesized SnSe matrix of single-crystal microplates, and the nanopores are achieved via the decompositions of these nanoprecipitates during the sintering process. Through detailed structural and chemical characterizations, it is found that the extralow thermal conductivity of 0.24 W m–1 K–1 caused by the effective phonon blocking and scattering at induced nanopores, interfaces, and grain boundaries and the high power factor of 5.06 μW cm–1 K–2 are derived from a well-tuned hole carrier concentration of 1.34 × 1019 cm–3 via inducing high Sn vacancies by self-doping, contributing to high ZTs. This study fills the gap of achieving nanoporous SnSe and provides an avenue in achieving high-performance thermoelectric properties of materials