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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2011
Sb-Zn alloys have interesting thermoelectric properties. Sb3Zn4 is a high performance ptype thermoelectric material appearing as a promising substitute for PbTe due to a higher factor of merit, ZT=1.3 at 673K [1] with the advantage of being Pb free. The preparation of the Sb3Zn4 compound is, however, not without problems. Even if some authors reported measurements on a single-phased material or single crystals [1,2], others described it as multi-phased alloy giving confused explanations for this result based on the existence of metastabilities due to strong interactions in the liquid phase [3,4].
Hence, the knowledge of a very trustful phase diagram of the Sb-Zn sytem is indispensable. As the previous published data on this system were discordant, we have reinvestigated it and from our results we have elaborated and characterised the thermoelectric compound Sb3Zn4.