4. Conclusions
This study investigated the effects of post-annealing on the thermoelectric properties of Bi-Te films. We annealed co-sput red Bi-Te films at different temperatures (100, 150 and 200 oC) under N2 ambient for 8 h, and characterized the crystallinity and morphology of the Bi-Te films using SEM and XRD. The microstruc ture characterization disclosed that the post-annealing treatment drastically changed the microstructure of the films by instigating the development of a strong c axis oriented texture. The measure ment of electrical transport and thermoelectric properties reveal their close link with the microstructure changes. The electron mobility and Seebeck coefficient increase significantly, leading to a strong improvement in power factor from 3.3 uwlK2 cm for the as-deposited sample to 24.1 HWIK2 cm for the 200 oC-annealed sample.