| 研究実績の概要 |
Milligram-level chemical vapor deposition synthesis of boron-based nanomaterials (based on BN) was achieved by using precursor materials. This scale-up is necessary to consider it for thermoelectric applications. This material itself does not have good thermoelectric properties, but we have started doping experiments to try to control the electronic band structure and also modify the thickness of films to achieve possible phonon confinement effects in order to enhance the thermoelectric properties. As a very interesting by-product of this research, chemical functionalization led to discovery of a wide range from superhydrophilicity to superhydrophobicity in the BN nanostructure films (this result was published as “Interface engineering of bio-inspired Boron nitride nano-architectures toward controllable hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity”, Nano/Micro Engineered and Molecular Systems (NEMS), 2015 IEEE 10th International Conference, p. 90-91 (2015). DOI: 10.1109/NEMS.2015.7147380).
While the boron-based nanomaterial research was proceeding, at the same time, one of the large goals of this research is to achieve dramatic breakthroughs of high thermoelectric performance in 2 dimensional materials. As a good template material, we also moved forward the solid-state synthesis of 2 dimensional bismuth telluride, which for 50 years has been the champion material at room temperature. We have achieved very high thermoelectric performance of record-level ZT of which a paper is being written.
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