2025/06/04 by Zhang, Chenguang, Recatala-Gomez, Jose, Aabdin, Zainul +20
#FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2506.04447
High-throughput synthesis of bulk inorganic materials is crucial for accelerating functional materials discovery but is hindered by slow, energy-intensive solid-state methods. We introduce Direct Joule-Heated Synthesis (DJS), a rapid, single-step and scalable solid-state synthesis technique achieving a 105-fold speedup and 20,000x energy efficiency improvement over conventional synthesis. DJS enables the synthesis of dense, bulk chalcogenides (\mathrmBi0.5Sb1.5Te3, AgSbTe2), achieving a zT of 2.3 at 573 K in optimally Cd/Se co-doped AgSbTe2, one of the highest for polycrystalline materials at this temperature. DJS enables optimal co-doping and rapid, non-equilibrium solidification, producing lamellar microstructures, interfacial regions, and cation-ordered nanodomains that scatter all-scale phonons, achieving ultralow lattice thermal conductivity (~0.2 W m-1 K-1 at 573 K). DJS establishes a new benchmark for scalable and fast synthesis, accelerating functional material discovery.