The Critical Point of Average Grain Size in Phonon Thermal Conductivity of Fine-Grained Undoped Lead Telluride

Undoped PbTe was melted at 1123 K, ball milled (BM) at rotation speeds from 90 to 180 rpm and hot pressed (HP) at 147 MPa and 650 K. Milling at 120 rpm produced the minimum phonon thermal conductivity of 1.29 W m−1 K−1 and average grain size of 0.80 µm. Phonon thermal conductivity was constant from coarse grain size to fine grain size of 1 µm and decreased suddenly at 0.80 µm. This tendency of phonon thermal conductivity corresponded to theoretical calculations with grain boundary scattering. However, the observed critical point of 1 µm was much larger than the calculated value of 0.03 µm. There was a significant inverse relationship between phonon thermal conductivity and FWHM of X-ray diffraction peaks. The low phonon thermal conductivity was associated with not only grain boundary scattering but high internal strain.