NbCoSb was once an unidentified alloy material whose "appearance" was metallic and whose "personality" was more like a semiconductor. Because of the promise of a new generation of high-temperature thermoelectric materials, many scientists have tried to synthesize pure 1:1:1 niobium cobalt antimony, but no one has been successful.
High purity niobium cobalt antimony alloy was prepared. The experiment also proved that the stable niobium-cobalt-antimony alloy does not belong to the nominal 19 electronic system metal, but 18 electronic system semiconductor with "defect", which is the authentic semiconductor thermoelectric material. This opens the way for scientists to find new thermoelectric materials.
Thermoelectric materials are everywhere, so to speak. In daily life, wine cabinets, water dispensers, car refrigerators and so on can work quietly, which relies on a piece of thermoelectric material to achieve heat preservation and cold preservation.
Another application of thermoelectric materials is thermoelectric power generation. In the long run of interstellar travel, the outer space probe can not get the supply of sunlight, must bring their own "dry food" - nuclear battery. The natural decay of radioactive isotopes produces heat. Thermoelectric generation may be the only power supply scheme for deep space exploration. Because of the advantages of small size, silence and zero loss, scientists all over the world are looking for thermoelectric materials with excellent performance to adapt to a variety of working environments. But the world has been unable to make high purity niobium cobalt antimony alloy. "Is the technology not there? Or is it an alloy that doesn't have that ratio. The 18 electron niobium cobalt antimony with a ratio of 0.8:1:1 was considered to be more stable. Snyder later contacted zhu to ask questions through experiments at zhejiang university.
It USES a magnetic field to create eddies that melt and suspend the metal in a container while continuing to "stir" to achieve maximum homogeneity. We finally know that nb-cobalt-antimony turns out to be an 18 electron system with a cationic vacancy, rather than a 19 electron system. It's a bit like our game of whipping out building blocks, but this research opens the door for scientists looking for new thermoelectric materials that could be used by future space probes to generate electricity.
