High cooling requirements are of increasing concerns, and means of managing these loads are being sought. Thermoelectric devices offer a unique capability of energy harvesting and providing point cooling utilizing the same device. Commercial thermoelectric materials are based on precious metals or other non-abundant materials. Carbon based fullerene materials have shown great promise for energy conversion applications. With their intrinsically low thermal conductivities, fullerene based materials may offer several advantages for thermoelectric applications over traditional inorganic based thermoelectric materials. Fulleride materials have already shown electrical properties spanning from the insulating to superconductive regimes.
This work focused on preparing and characterizing manganese fulleride(s) by wet chemical synthesis and physical vapor deposition methods, both building on recent analogous zinc fulleride work. Characterization of the wet synthetic powders revealed fullerols were produced instead of fullerides. Consequently, the resulting material(s) was found to be unsuitable for thermoelectric applications. Deposition samples yielded more favorable results for both characterization and material properties. The resulting room temperature zT was determined to be 6.0 · 10-6. In all cases, electrical conductivities and thermopowers require improvement if manganese fulleride(s) are to be considered as viable thermoelectric material.