Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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DS: Fachverband Dünne Schichten

DS 13: Thermoelectric Thin Films and Nanostructures I

DS 13.5: Talk

Tuesday, March 23, 2010, 11:30–11:45, H8

Thermoelectric CoSb₃ thin films on amorphous SiO₂ substrates — •Marcus Daniel, Christoph Brombacher, Gunter Beddis, and Manfred Albrecht — Chemnitz University of Technology, Institute of Physics, Germany

Since energy efficiency is becoming more and more important and novel nanostructured materials as well as new material groups have recently been introduced, the field of thermoelectricity is particularly in the focus of current research activities. One of the promising materials for future applications is CoSb₃ in its skutterudite phase. In this study, 30nm thick CoSb_x films with different Sb content x have been deposited by MBE onto thermally oxidized Si(001) substrates. The deposition temperature was varied between room temperature and 300^∘C. In addition, samples deposited at room temperature have been annealed under UHV condition for one hour at different temperatures up to 700^∘C. The composition of these films was investigated by RBS and it was found that the Sb content of the deposited films is strongly dependant on the substrate temperature/annealing temperature. Structural investigations by XRD reveal the existence of the desired skutterudite phase in a narrow composition range and the influence of the preparation parameters on the phase formation will be discussed. In addition, the topography and electric conductivity was measured by AFM and four probe measurements, respectively. It was found that the morphology of the samples dominates the electrical conductance.