Significant Reduction in Thermal Conductivity and Improved Thermopower of Electron‐Doped Ba_1–<i>_x</i>La<i>_x</i>TiO₃with Nanostructured Rectangular Pores

Electron-doped BaTiO3 is a less studied n-type metal oxide thermoelectric material. In this work, the electrical conductivity of samples has been improved by introducing La to yield an Ba1–xLaxTiO3 semiconducting Density functional theory calculations show that optimal electron-doping occurs at x = 0.2, and also confirmed experimentally. To improve properties further, nanostructured cuboidal pores are introduced into bulk using F127 surfactant micelles for chemical templating process, followed spark plasma sintering. Interestingly, transmission electron microscopy images X-ray powder diffraction analysis confirms our fabricated cubic perovskite phase with rectangular-prism >4 nm. Scanning all have similar grain boundaries uniform doping, which suggests large reduction in lattice thermal F127-treated arises primarily from pore distribution, introduces anisotropic phonon scattering within unique nanoarchitecture. The sample 20 at% doping nanopores shows thermopower doubled compared related without porosity. Together conductivity, enables significant improvement figure merit, zT other samples.