Improved trade-off between thermoelectric performance and mechanical reliability of Mg₂Si by hybridization of few-layered reduced graphene oxides

Nanocomposites can simultaneously enhance the thermoelectric and mechanical properties of thermoelectric materials. Here, we fabricated bulks of Mg_1.96Al_0.04Si_0.97Bi_0.03 with monodispersed few-layered reduced graphene oxides utilizing ultrasonic-based wet chemical pulverizing-mixing and spark plasma sintering to improve unfavorable trade-off between thermoelectric performance and mechanical reliability, which is important for commercialization. An unexpected high fracture toughness of ~1.88 MPa m^1/2 was observed due to the synergetic effect of the deflection of crack propagation, bridging, and sheet pull-out mechanisms, and a high thermoelectric figure of merit ~0.6 was obtained even for a high content (3 vol.%) of reduced graphene oxides.