The niobium cobalt antimony alloy (NbCoSb) was once an unidentified alloy material that "" looks" "metal, and" "personality" "is more like a semiconductor. Because it is expected to be a new generation of high-temperature thermoelectric materials, many scientists have tried to synthesize pure 1:1:1 nb, cobalt and antimony, but no one has succeeded yet. What's going on here?
The high purity niobium, cobalt and antimony alloy has been manufactured in the laboratory a professor at the school of materials science and engineering at zhejiang university. The stable niobium, cobalt and antimony alloy does not belong to the nominal 19 electronic system metal, but has the "defect" 18 electronic system semiconductor, a kind of authentic semiconductor thermoelectric material.
Whether you have paid attention to, wine cabinet, water dispenser, car refrigerator and so on are quiet "worker". They have no buzzing compressors and rely on a piece of thermoelectric material for insulation and cooling. Thermoelectric material is a kind of material which can realize the conversion between electric energy and thermal energy. In the on-board refrigerator, thermoelectric materials use electric current to generate heat absorption effect, thus playing the role of cooling protection.
Another application of thermoelectric materials is thermoelectric generation. In the long and persistent interplanetary travel, the space probe can not get the sunlight to recharge, must bring "dry food" - nuclear battery. The natural decay of radioactive isotopes produces heat and, with the help of thermoelectric materials, generates electricity at different temperatures.
X - ray diffraction results in the heart gradually solve the puzzle: indeed it is not 1:1:1, but 0.8:1:1! When tested, the high purity material had a thermoelectric merit (ZT) of 0.9, much higher than the previously reported 0.4. "Although the value of 0.9 is not outstanding in thermoelectric materials, it is enough to get us excited!" "Zhu said. "We finally know that niobium, cobalt and antimony is a cationic absence of 18 electron systems, not 19 electron systems."
