The exploration of new synthesis methods is important for the improvement of the thermoelectric property of a material for the different mechanisms of microstructure fabrication, surface activity modulation, and particle refinement. Herein, we prepared p-Bi2Te3 bulk materials by a simple synthesis method of the plasma-assisted ball milling, which yielded finer nanopowders, higher texture of in-plane direction, and higher efficiency compared to the traditional ball milling, favoring the simultaneous improvement of electrical and thermal properties. When combined with the Te liquid sintering, nano-/microscale hierarchical pores were fabricated and the carrier mobility was also increased, which together resulted in the low lattice thermal conductivity of 0.52 W·m-1·K-1 and the high power factor of 43.4 μW·cm-1·K-2 at 300 K, as well as the ranking ahead zT of 1.4@375 K. Thus, this work demonstrated the advantages of plasma-assisted ball milling in highly efficient synthesis of p-type Bi2Te3 with promising thermoelectric performance, which can also be utilized to prepare other thermoelectric materials.
Keywords: liquid phase sintering; low lattice thermal conductivity; p-Bi2Te3; plasma-assisted ball milling; thermoelectric properties.