Enhanced High-Temperature Thermoelectric Performance in Te-Doped Electronegative Element-Filled Skutterudites via Suppressing Bipolar Effects and Enhanced Phonon Scattering

CoSb₃-based skutterudites have great potential as midtemperature thermoelectric (TE) materials due to their low cost and excellent electrical and mechanical properties. Their application, however, is limited by the high thermal conductivity and the degradation of TE performance at elevated temperatures, attributed to the adverse effects of bipolar diffusion. Herein, a series of Se_yCo₄Sb_12–xTe_x compounds were successfully synthesized by combining a solid-state reaction and spark plasma sintering techniques to mitigate these challenges. It was found that doping Te at the Sb sites effectively enhanced the carrier concentration and suppressed the bipolar effect to obtain a superior power factor of ∼43 μW cm^–1 K^–2. Furthermore, due to the low resonant frequency of Se, filling voids of CoSb₃ with Se achieved a low lattice thermal conductivity of 1.55 W m^–1 K^–1. Nevertheless, Se filling introduced additional holes, reducing the carrier concentration without a significant detriment of the carrier mobility. As a result, a maximum figure of merit of 1.23 was achieved for Se_0.1Co₄Sb_11.55Te_0.45 at 773 K. This work provides a valuable guidance for selecting appropriate filling and doping components to achieve synergistic optimization of the acoustics and electronics of CoSb₃-based skutterudites.