Hydrothermal synthesis and thermoelectric properties of PbS

In this paper, hydrothermal approach combined with high pressure sintering method was employed to synthesize PbS. The X-ray diffraction results show that single phase PbS can be obtained by a simple hydrothermal method. The scanning electron microscope results show that the PbS sample has nearly cubic shape and preserves well crystallized and coarse grains after high pressure sintering. The thermoelectric performance of PbS obtained in this study is comparable to that of a PbS sample prepared by conventional method. The carrier type and concentration of PbS can be tuned effectively by doping with Bi. The maximum figure of merit for PbS doped with 1 mol% Bi reaches 0.44 at 550 K, which is about 30 % higher than that of undoped PbS. These results indicate that hydrothermal method provides a viable and controllable way of tuning the electrical transport and thermoelectric properties for PbS.