Synthesis, Structure, and Thermoelectric Properties of α-Zn<sub>3</sub>Sb<sub>2</sub> and Comparison to β-Zn<sub>13</sub>Sb<sub>10</sub>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Zn–Sb compounds (e.g., ZnSb, β-Zn 13 Sb 10 ) are known to have intriguing thermoelectric properties, but studies of the Zn 3 Sb 2 composition are largely absent. In this work, α- Zn 3 Sb 2 was synthesized and studied via temperature-dependent synchrotron powder diffraction. The α- Zn 3 Sb 2 phase undergoes a phase transformation to the β form at 425 °C, which is stable until melting at 590 °C. Rapid quenching was successful in stabilizing the α phase at room temperature, although all attempts to quench β-Zn 3 Sb 2 were unsuccessful. The structure of α-Zn 3 Sb 2 was solved using single crystal diffraction techniques and verified through Rietveld refinement of the powder data. α-Zn 3 Sb 2 adopts a large hexagonal cell ( R 3̅ space group, a = 15.212(2), c = 74.83(2) Å) containing a well-defined framework of isolated Sb 3– anions but highly disordered Zn 2+ cations. Dense ingots of both the α-Zn 3 Sb 2 and β-Zn 13 Sb 10 phases were formed and used to characterize and compare the low temperature thermoelectric properties. Resistivity and Seebeck coefficient measurements on α-Zn 3 Sb 2 are consistent with a small-gap, degenerately doped, p -type semiconductor. The temperature-dependent lattice thermal conductivity of α-Zn 3 Sb 2 is unusual, resembling that of an amorphous material. Consistent with the extreme degree of Zn disorder observed in the structural analysis, phonon scattering in α-Zn 3 Sb 2 appears to be completely dominated by point-defect scattering over all temperatures below 350 K. This contrasts with the typical balance between point-defect scattering and Umklapp scattering seen in β-Zn 13 Sb 10 . Using the Debye–Callaway interpretation of the lattice thermal conductivity, we use the differences between α-Zn 3 Sb 2 and β-Zn 13 Sb 10 to illustrate the potential significance of cation/anion disorder in the Zn–Sb system.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".