ISIS Neutron and Muon Source Data Journal

Ultralow thermal conductivity in aikinite, CuPbBiS3

Abstract: There is a need for thermoelectric materials that do not contain tellurium, a rare element in the Earth's crust, to enable widespread implementation of thermoelectric energy recovery. High-throughput calculations led us to identify the mineral aikinite, CuPbBiS3, as a potential thermoelectric material. Our calculated vibrational density-of-states suggests that copper rattling and anharmonicity, arising from the presence of a lone pair on the lead cation, should result in low thermal conductivity. Experimentally, we have found that the thermal conductivity of aikinite at room temperature is remarkably low (< 0.6 W m-1K-1). Here, we seek to exploit inelastic neutron scattering to provide direct evidence for the presence of the low-energy vibrational modes predicted by our calculations.

Local Contact: Dr David Voneshen
Experimenter: Professor Anthony Powell
Experimenter: Dr Paz Vaqueiro-Rodriguez
Experimenter: Dr Shriparna Mukherjee

DOI: 10.5286/ISIS.E.RB2210076

ISIS Experiment Number: RB2210076

Publisher: STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source

Data format: RAW/Nexus
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Data Citation

The recommended format for citing this dataset in a research publication is as:
[author], [date], [title], [publisher], [doi]

For Example:
Dr David Voneshen et al; (2022): Ultralow thermal conductivity in aikinite, CuPbBiS3, STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.RB2210076

Data is released under the CC-BY-4.0 license.